Speaker 0 00:00:00 Everyone and welcome to the 72nd episode of the Atlas society asks. My name is Jennifer Anji Grossman. My friends know me as JAG. I am the CEO of the outlet society. We are the leading nonprofit connecting young people to the ideas of Iran in fun, creative ways, like our graphic novels, animated videos. And of course our killer social media. Uh, today we are joined by Dr. Wilfred Riley for I even begin to introduce Dr. Riley. I want to remind those of you who are joining us on zoom on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. You can go ahead. Use the comment section to typing your questions short, and we will get to as many of them as we can. Uh, professor Fred Riley is a political science professor at the, um, uh, Kentucky state university. It's a top 30 historically black college. He's the author of several books, including the $50 million question, a book dealing with how people value identity in 2019. He published hate crime pokes how the left is selling a fake race war. And just last year, he also taboo facts. You can't talk about, but we're going to talk about them anyway today. Professor Riley, welcome again, and thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 00:01:35 Thanks for having me.
Speaker 0 00:01:38 So let's start with a hate crime hopes in the introduction. You describe the book as both a pro-American and a profoundly pro black worker. So science and you described your intention as, uh, in writing. Is that of Lancing a boil? What, um, what is the source of infection and how does the research you present dress it?
Speaker 1 00:02:06 Well, that's a, it's actually a really good and well-phrased question. What's the source of the infection. That's something that's discussed in the book, but that I haven't really heard presented often in that fashion. So what I'm talking about when I say Lancing, a boil is the reality that there are a lot of ideas that are very prevalent, sort of modern middle-class American society. And you can really run down a list of these, like the black lives matter narrative that there's a near genocidal race war going on. I mean, there's a top 1000 books on Amazon right now by the prominent attorney, Benjamin Crump called open season legalized genocide of colored people. Um, there's these sort of interracial crime narrative in back of that, where both the left and the quote-unquote alt-right are constantly trotting out. These stories of people brutalized and abused by these, these warrior class citizens of the other group.
Speaker 1 00:02:55 And a lot of these names have almost become known nationally and internationally. I, the barbecue Becky and so on down the line, we saw a young woman lose an executive job the other day because of a clash in a dog park. Um, so this is again presented as something that's extraordinarily common, um, you know, white privilege, at least the univariate version of that narrative, um, and this sort of stuff across the board. The idea that biological sex is a complex, tricky reality, cultural appropriation. So on down the line, and many of these ideas are backed up by almost no empirical facts whatsoever. So in the books, hate crime hopes and taboo, I mean, hate crime hopes. I look at a lot of these very high profile incidents of a legend interracial, or cross class violence. Uh, Jesse smile. It doesn't make it into the book in full, but I mean, I talk about Yasmine.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 So we, the burnt black churches, if I recall we have air force academy in there and you can just do duke lacrosse. You can just go on down the line with these Tawana Brawley. Uh, and taboo goes beyond that into breaking down the actual number of, uh, you know, unarmed African Americans killed by the police in the typical year. Last year, that figure was 17. Uh, it looks like perhaps seven or eight people were killed, uh, by white officers that fall in that category. Uh, the actual figures on interracial violence last year, violent crimes involving either a black person and a white victim or a white person and a black victim were 3% of what you call serious index crime person, most likely to kill you as your ex-wife. But even within that, that tiny set, it wasn't, there wasn't a minority advantage from any sort of moral standpoint, we committed 80% of our copper practically of those crimes.
Speaker 1 00:04:33 And just all of these things, the idea of systemic racism, once you adjust for age and test scores, um, the idea of white privilege, once you adjust for class, and there's some stuff on the heart, right from the heart, right? That's equally nonsensical of the book, but that's frankly not the focus. The focus of the book is that all of these massively prominent ideas that are presented constantly in modern upper-middle-class discourse in the USA are just nonsense. There's, there's clearly no race war going on 25% of marriages or whatever it is are interracial. So we can work on eliminating residual racism and also things I think are more important strengthening markets. And so I met a lot of you guys, you guys would probably agree on many of, but that doesn't require this level of dishonesty and BS and nonsense. So your question is sort of who's presenting this.
Speaker 1 00:05:17 I think that's a fascinating question. Um, we seem to have produced any elite in the USA. This has been discussed by everyone from Tim Weiss to Tucker Carlson. That doesn't much like the country, which is a pretty remarkable thing. I mean the few exceptions later, Byzantine empire and so on as a political scientist or a historian, you don't see that very much. I think a lot of things Macron has done are stupid, but I don't, I don't get the impression that France is elite dislikes, Frenchmen, and Nigeria is elite, this Nigeria and very integrated countries as well. Singapore is elite dislikes, Singaporeans here. Many people seem to think there's something retrograde or unusual about the U S national and that this needs to be changed. And partisan politics does tie tie into a good bit of this. I mean, if you look at, uh, American newsrooms right now, not only is there a very specific population composition, but then almost everyone is young in a fairly high class in SES terms, coastal urban, so on down the line, but there's, there's one political perspective, which would you could call kind of, I would think of it as HR liberalism sort of mainstream dull center, left positions tell by almost everyone, uh, pew research in 2004, looked at the attitudes of national news journalists and found that only 7% of them were on the right, in any sense, um, conservatives libertarians, right of the center, right?
Speaker 1 00:06:45 There were very few true radicals as well. I thought that was interesting. Almost everyone fell into this single spectrum, um, sort of sort of Hillary Clinton voting Americans. And that that's very true in academia as well. Although we were a little more to the radical left, uh, econ live recently found that if I recall correctly, 26% of academics see themselves as radicals on other 25% are associate themselves as activists, 18% openly see themselves as Marxists or communists
Speaker 0 00:07:12 Everyone. And welcome to the 72nd episode of the Atlas society asks. My name is Jennifer Anji Grossman. My friends know me as JAG. I am the CEO of the outlet society. We are the leading nonprofit connecting young people to the ideas of Iran in fund creative ways like our graphic novels, animated videos. And of course our killer social media. Uh, today we are joined by Dr. Wilfred Riley for, I even begin to introduce Dr. Riley. I want to remind those of you who are joining us on zoom on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. You can go ahead, use the comment section to typing your questions short, and we will get to as many of them as we can. Uh, professor Riley is a political science professor at the, um, Kentucky state university, if a top of 30 historically black college, he's the author of several books, including the $50 million question, a book dealing with how people value identity in 2019, he published hate crime pokes how the left is selling a fake race war. And just last year, he also taboo facts. You can't talk about, but we're going to talk about them anyway today. Professor Riley, welcome again, and thanks for joining
Speaker 1 00:08:47 Us. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 0 00:08:50 So let's start with, uh, hate crime hopes in the introduction. You describe the book as both a pro-American and a profoundly pro black worker. So science and you described your intention as, uh, in writing. Is that of Lancing a boil? What, um, what is the source of infection and how does the research you present dress it?
Speaker 1 00:09:18 Well, that's a, that's actually a really good and well-phrased question. What's the source of the infection. That's something that's discussed in the book, but that I haven't really heard presented often in that fashion. So what I'm talking about when I say Lancing, a boil is the reality that there are a lot of ideas that are very prevalent, sort of modern middle-class American society. And you can really run down a list of these, like the black lives matter narrative that there's a near genocidal race war going on. I mean, there's a top 1000 books on Amazon right now by the prominent attorney, Benjamin Crump called open season legalized genocide of colored people. Um, there's these sort of interracial crime narrative in back of that, we're both the left and the quote-unquote alt-right are constantly trotting out these stories of people brutalized and abused by these warrior class citizens of the other group.
Speaker 1 00:10:07 And a lot of these names have almost become known nationally and internationally. I mean the barbecue Becky and so on down the line, we saw a young woman losing an executive job the other day because of a clash in a dog park. Um, so this is again presented as something that's extraordinarily common, um, you know, white privilege, at least the univariate version of that narrative, um, and this sort of stuff across the board. The idea that biological sex is a complex, tricky reality, cultural appropriation. So on down the line, and many of these ideas are backed up by almost no empirical facts whatsoever. So in the books, hate crime hopes and taboo, I mean, hate crime hopes. I look at a lot of these very high profile incidents of a legend interracial, or cross class violence. Uh, Jessie smile. It doesn't make it into the book in full, but I mean, I talk about Yasmine.
Speaker 1 00:10:56 So we, the burnt black churches, if I recall we have air force academy in there and you can just do duke lacrosse. You can just go on down the line with these Tawana Brawley. Uh, and taboo goes beyond that into breaking down the actual number of unarmed African-Americans killed by the police and the typical year last year, that figure was 17. Uh, it looks like perhaps seven or eight people were killed, uh, by white officers that fall in that category. Uh, the actual figures on interracial violence last year, violent crimes involving either a black person and a white victim or a white person, and a black victim were 3% of what you call serious index crime person, most likely to kill you as your ex-wife. But even within that, that tiny set, it wasn't, there wasn't a minority advantage from any sort of moral standpoint, we committed 80% of our copper way of those crimes.
Speaker 1 00:11:46 And just all of these things, the idea of systemic racism, once you adjust for age and test scores, um, the idea of white privilege, once you adjust for class, and there's some stuff on the heart, right from the heart, right? That's equally nonsensical of the book, but that's frankly not the focus. The focus of the book is that all of these massively prominent ideas that are presented constantly in modern upper-middle-class discourse in the USA are just nonsense. There's clearly no race war going on 25% of marriages or whatever it is are interracial. So we can work on eliminating residual racism and also things I think are more important strengthening markets and so on. And a lot of you guys, you guys would probably agree on many of them, but that doesn't require this level of dishonesty and BS and nonsense. So your question is sort of who's presenting this.
Speaker 1 00:12:30 I think that's a fascinating question. Um, we seem to have produced any elite in the USA. This has been discussed by everyone from Tim Weiss to Tucker Carlson. That doesn't much like the country, which is a pretty remarkable thing. I made a few exceptions later, Byzantine empire and so on as a political scientist or a historian, you don't see that very much. I think a lot of things Macron has done are stupid, but I don't, I don't get the impression that France is elite dislikes, Frenchmen, and Nigeria is elite dislikes, Nigerians, and very integrated countries as well. Singapore is elite dislikes, Singaporeans here. Many people seem to think there's something retrograde or unusual about the U S national population and that this needs to be changed. And partisan politics does tie tie into a good bit of this. I mean, if you look at, uh, American newsrooms right now, not only is there a very specific population composition, but then almost everyone is young in a fairly high class in SES terms, coastal urban, so on down the line, but there's, there's one political perspective, which would you could call kind of, I would think of it as HR liberalism sort of mainstream dolls center, left positions and tell by almost everyone, uh, pew research in 2004, looked at the attitudes of national news journalists and found that only 7% of them were on the right, in any sense, um, conservatives libertarians, right of the center, right.
Speaker 1 00:13:58 There were very few true radicals as well. I thought that was interesting. Almost everyone fell into this single spectrum, um, sort of sort of Hillary Clinton voting Americans. And that that's very true in academia as well. Although we were a little more to the radical left, uh, econ live recently found that if I recall correctly, 26% of academics see themselves as radicals on other 25% are associate themselves as activists, 18% openly see themselves as Marxist or communist. So I think you have a group of people that almost all fit one demographic profile. And I actually think that's more important than politics to some extent, uh, but then to also share this sort of banal center, left political perspective, and that very often don't like the institutions they see around them. And a lot of this is post Frankfurt theory stuff that this is all set up to oppress, you know, any performance gaps between groups or evidence of that oppression, but that's the climate in which these sort of ideas can thrive.
Speaker 1 00:14:54 And when you point out the empirical facts, you very often just see the bowl posts move. I mean, in the case of 17 black people in a year, unarmed black people are killed by the police. That's all 17. The answer will often be something like ones too many, but I think those of us that do have conservative or libertarian or for that matter actually radical any interesting perspective that might be based on data. Shouldn't do understand the extent to which what we hear is often BS and react aggressively to that. So that is, that is the problem. The boil is that this full that's nonsensical information, the sources, I think the group I've described now how to Lance it, that's the issue
Speaker 0 00:15:34 You described, how the inspiration for hate crime hoax came from Barry Glassner as the culture of fear. Would you call the most important book that you've ever read? Uh, it's been a theme that we've covered a lot on this show with guests like John Tierney and Marion TUPE. Who've talked about the similar human tendency to exaggerate and focus on negative information and threats. So I, I was just interested with the connection that you drew between glass work and your subject matter. What what's the relation?
Speaker 1 00:16:12 Well, I think the shared theme is this unbelievable level of panic fear in American life. And I actually, I don't like stereotyping in my day-to-day life, but as a social scientist, I'm almost paid to do it. So there's a specific sector in which this occurs like middle to lower upper class people that are involved in the discourse. I don't think when I play ball in my working class neighborhood and Frankford, you hear so much of this, but the people that are very influential in terms of what we read in the paper or the people who are on Twitter or Instagram might be a very simple way to put this are almost all products of AMEA lieu in which fear is constant generated by the mass media, a Glasser's book. I certainly liked last, or I might've, I might've been giving my fellow a social scientist a bit too much of a shout out there. If I said, it's the most simple,
Speaker 0 00:16:59 I was wishing to see that here that, uh, Atlas shrugged was the most important.
Speaker 1 00:17:04 Yeah, definitely. Definitely top 10. But I mean, like in terms of that, that's a big, you know, the origin of species and the Bible are both the books. I mean, you know, I I'd say the best book I've read probably is Tom soul's vision of the anointed past couple of years, but I mean, uh, certainly Barry Glassner, his book is right up there because he's the first guy and he's politically quite a bit to the left of me, but a good pile and quant researcher. He looked at all of these fears that existed in that category that I'm describing like American, urban, upper middle-class life, and actually broke down how likely they were th how likely the source of the fear was to actually claim your life for your health. And he goes through all of them and he plane crashes were a massive focus of the news at this time, the late nineties.
Speaker 1 00:17:46 And he, I believe is the guy who pointed out that it's 10 times as to, uh, fly on a plane as it is to drive, but a young child kidnapping. I mean, if you remember this period, this is sort of, you know, Amber alerts and Megan's law and so on. I mean, people were walking around their kids on leashes. You know, moms were terrified to let little Jimmy leave the house. He points out that the total number of actual kidnappings I E child taken by a true stranger, not as sort of a strange blue collar dad, but some of that actually wants to abuse or sexually abused that kid gone for more than a week there a hundred or so of these cases per year. And he actually makes a very obvious point, which is sort of how would this even happen? I mean, when I think of myself at the park playing basketball with friends, I mean, a group of guys would chase down.
Speaker 1 00:18:32 Some of it walked off with a screaming child that didn't resemble them. So, I mean, yeah, this is, this is very esoteric, unusual, low risk threat, but people were terrified of it because of constant repetition. I mean, the parallels are obvious to police violence and so on. And just, just throughout the book, I mean, heterosexual aids, killer kids on and on and on. And these are the actual figures as read these risks. Um, some of those might be touched on only in passing. Some of those might be touched on in other books, but the point is very much there. And the same, the same issue is true today. I mean, there was a great study from the skeptic research center recently, which asked people, um, young left just identified individuals, mostly how many people do you think in a typical year are unarmed men or black men who are, who are killed by the police.
Speaker 1 00:19:21 And again, we know the actual figure 17, but for people that identified as leftist or very liberal, if I recall correctly, 31% of them estimated this is about a thousand, uh, 14 to 15% estimated the figure at about 10008% thought. It was more than that. To put that in context, there are less than 20,000 murders in a year. And although we are overrepresented only about half of them involve black people. So these estimates of the number of unarmed choir boys gunned down by cops were on par with the total number of murders or at least of black murders. And that's what I mean by incessant fear. And I think there's a big, real role for social science, but people ask like, what do you guys do other than, you know, predict the market and, you know, invent advertising like some of these old jokes is anything replicable.
Speaker 1 00:20:10 One thing that can be done is that you can look at the data that easily exists. That's out there. I mean the BJs crime report comes out annually and say, well, no, this isn't true. This isn't real. These are the actual things that we need to be worried about. And they're, they're mundane things like cancer or domestic violence auto wreck. So that, that is, that is the point of Glassdoor and that dual very large sentence. The point of both of my books stop being so damn afraid and look around at the actual environment. And last, last time we saw this under COVID really dramatically. The, the COVID narrative right now is sort of conservatives that libertarians are to blame for a lot of this. Look at them. I'm not wearing two, these animals, these savages, the reality is that many of the most damaging innovations or things that took place under COVID.
Speaker 1 00:20:56 I mean, the lockdown of the schools for more than a year, for example, were based on fear driven rather than realistic projections. Um, it turns out that we knew the actual facts on COVID pretty early on. I mean, the IFR for the disease is between 0.26 and 0.6, 3%. Uh, the average victim we've known since the first data started coming out of Italy is around 81. I mean a terrible disease, but I mean, there are entire documents, great Barrington declaration. So on without endorsing it, then focus on how we could have managed the disease with very similar loss of life, if not less, but with life going on. And it was primarily fear that prevented that from happening Neil Ferguson's prediction of 2 million dead before last September and so on. So both books and glass news book make the point. We need to get a handle on this terror. That's governing people
Speaker 0 00:21:50 And certainly not to be passing it down from one generation to the next one, parent who is, has exaggerated fears about child abductions, uh, or hate speech, or, uh, you know, even accidents is going to overprotect their kid. Their kid is going to feel more afraid, feel more threatened, uh, be less likely to take the kinds of risks that they might, um, take to hopefully survive and, and gain a sense of confidence and an agency. Um, let's, uh, get into a little bit of the, the methodology of your book. How many crimes are fake hate crimes? Did you cover, uh, how do you choose what to focus on and why?
Speaker 1 00:22:41 Well, there are more than a hundred covered in the book. Each one gets a sort of mini chapter of two to three pages. Uh, my overall data set on this as a professional quality dataset, it's available to anyone to request it from me, but it currently includes more than 600 cases and more than the case studies and more than a thousand individual incidents of hate hoaxing. So there, there is no shortage of these happening. The, the basic methodology is simply that I used the tool, Google, Google scholar, J store. So on some resources, a SPLC that popped up on, uh, Google and similar sites to check out terms like hate crime hoax, hate crime collapsed. I mean, I would very often follow a case from the beginning until the potential collapse and observe it collapsed. So the research process for this book took less than a year.
Speaker 1 00:23:33 I mean, most of may, in many cases, I was already aware that the certain case had collapsed before I began to research it. But what I basically just did was take all of these incidents and put them for, I think the first time in a single sort of academically organized file, and then compare that number to the number of hate crimes that occur in a typical year. And I don't, I don't make any precise down to the decimal point estimates about the hate hoaxing right. Something I've had to clarify a number of times sort of left-leaning reporters. But I mean, what I will say is that in a typical year hate crimes are pretty rare hate crimes at the level of someone actually reporting that felony or that Amos demeanor to the FBI. Um, there are about 7,000 in a bad year. So I, when I put together the first round of the dataset had 409, uh, cases of hoaxing there, or incidents of hoaxing, they were concentrated somewhere outside, but they were concentrated within a five-year period.
Speaker 1 00:24:32 And so you can compare that first to the, the baseline of 7,000, but then secondarily, each one of the cases was something that had been first been reported and then been reported as debunked in serious national media. And when we did a secondary level of, of research or of analysis, uh, obviously not every hate crime receives national level reporting, uh, as far as I, and a very talented research associate were able to Winkle out it's about one in 10, that does. So that, that gives you the second data set of annually, let's say 700 prominent cases. And against that over a period of five, six years, you saw nearly 500 and keep it as small as possible, 400, 3 50 total collapses. So that's a pretty significant rate. That was something that surprised me. And we were able to compare that to the rate of convictions and hate crime cases, which turned out to be extremely low.
Speaker 1 00:25:29 I mean, a document was just released by the FBI DOJ, looking at the total number of hate crimes that were not reported, but were a perp was identified, but matter was taken seriously. And this was referred for prosecution, um, between 2005 and 2019. And if I have this correct, that was about 1700 in 284 of these cases, someone was actually convicted. So, um, I'm sure that the majority of the cases, the ones we didn't uncover as frauds did occur, but the hoax rate one, we documented the cases too. I really, I mean, I wrote the entire book there wasn't a research team on this one, but I then compared that to the maximum number of hate crimes at a particular year, then the number of widely reported hate crimes at a particular year. And then to the conviction rate, because the majority it's not as though the 90 whatever percentage of hate incidents that aren't exposed as having not happened, resulted in the definite conviction of a Neo Nazi. Most of them resulted in if you will, an ambiguous non result where someone wrote graffiti on the side of a house and it might've been a bigot, it might've been a hoaxer, it might've been an ex or a fraternity member playing a joke. We won't know, but that, that essentially is the book standard research techniques were used to pull out for the first time in a while. How many of these there were, and it's not an, it's not an insubstantial number.
Speaker 0 00:26:58 So looking at the history of your subject matter, are these hoaxes a relatively new phenomenon? Are you able to point to, um, legislation or incidents, you know, maybe famous hate crime? Uh we're you know, relatively constant.
Speaker 1 00:27:26 Yeah. Well, I think that, so I was able to find more definite hoaxes within the recent past. Certainly. I mean, hundreds of times, more than in distant, previous arrows, like the 1960s and 1970s, uh, after a while, because we stumbled on so many prominent cases while doing research on more modern incidents, some of those cases did make their way into the dataset. So right up front, the number, the final number of a thousand incidents and includes those. But the, the vast majority were close to our, our recent day. I guess the question would be, is there more hate hoaxing today or is there simply greater online media access to cases that happened more recently? Uh, I don't really speculate on that, but I would not be surprised if and the modern quote unquote woke era, um, the rates of this have increased exponentially. I mean, so one thing when you say, you know, these are, these are prominent cases or are there other trends you want to cover?
Speaker 1 00:28:28 One of the most obvious is that virtually all of the hyper prominent recent sort of racial conflict incidents have turned out to not be real. I think that's fair to say with the exception of something like mass shootings, which obviously did unfortunately occur. But if you look at Jessie Smollett, for example, I mean, mocked by Dave Chappelle is the mad Frenchman juicy smile. Yay. If you look at Covington Catholic, I mean, that, that was a school from kind of my neck of the woods, where these, these high school athletes who were accused of this abusive stuff surrounding a native American Indian elder, and chanting and threatening to take his sacred rain drum away, none of it ever happened. Uh, if you look at Eric Thomas, the Congresswoman who claimed that she was assaulted in a high end grocery store, the guy who was involved who was an anti-racist Cuban national actually showed up at a press conference to radiculor, but just going on down the line air force academy, where there's so many incidents that in general had to show up on campus to speak out against racism and Kansas state, these horrible slurs on all the cars, really, you can go on and on for quite some time with us.
Speaker 1 00:29:34 I mean, we've seen two incidents with people, a fighting over dogs recently that have led to the, of started these white female executives. None of this stuff seems to pan out. And I do think this ties into the same environment where you're seeing more of these cases and you can explore why I do for a bit in the book. Are we, are we granting a certain cachet to victimization? For example, I'm not a psychologist. I mean, I'd be interested in working on some real pieces about why this happens, but one clue might be that every time I've looked at a professional take on this, whether it's the site fake hate crimes.org, whether it's my own dataset, more than a third of these incidents take place on college campuses, college university, or prep, school campuses, and not more than 1% of the population of society can possibly exist in that environment. I would estimate perhaps you got 2 million college students, 4 million, something like that. So full-time on campus students. So why is that? Why is there such a dense concentration of these things precisely where kind of modern successor ideology is, is most prevalent? I think I'll leave that to people's common sense to figure out.
Speaker 0 00:30:49 So do I want to make sure I got right. So you were saying that when you look at these, uh, is it all hate crimes or the fake Cape crimes that 30% are taking place on college campuses?
Speaker 1 00:31:04 Well, that's a, that's a fascinating question, actually. Um, so 30% or more of the hopes is
[email protected] or of the dataset, uh, definitely take place on, on the UW campus. If there were a report. Now I think this would be a diff actually I think those, those two data points would go together. I probably should go back and check and see whether it's the 30% or something similar of all hate crimes. Again, some good input there happen on college campuses. If so, I don't think that would counter my, my sort of thesis. I think it would support it because it's not possible that 30% of all racial tension takes place at Yale or Vassar. I mean, what that would almost certainly have to be is people taking sort of the normal inconveniences of day-to-day life and reporting them. And we've certainly seen this in other sectors.
Speaker 1 00:31:58 I mean, there's a recent book called something like the campus rape frenzy. And I don't think either you or I would ever minimize actual sexual assault, but I mean, one point the book makes is that by some estimates, 17 or 18% of the claims of abuse on campus don't seem to have happened at all in any conventional sense. I believe that's the figure more than half were unprosecuted, but I mean, they involve things like two people mutually getting drunk. So if we expand the definition of sexual violence to include men and women, men, and woman have a bottle of wine on date too, that would bring in most members of society, I think. And it's same thing with some of this. I'm getting to the point. If there, if a third of the hate crimes do take place on college campuses, again, you have to ask what a hate crime is and this, this isn't wild speculation.
Speaker 1 00:32:51 One of the first pieces I wrote about this was for Colette, the online ed journal. And I have been asked by Andy know, uh, as he was getting into journalism on this sector. You know, I think I'm a very good journalist, but you're an academic. Can you take a look at the figures for this one city, Seattle Seattle's reported something insane, like 300 hate crimes last year. And when I looked at the situation, I think it was very similar to what you'd probably see on campus. Very few of the hate crimes under a hundred, if I recall correctly, were prosecutable able to go all the way through to the courts. Most of those didn't result in a conviction. And the reason for this was that the city had dramatically expanded the definition of a hate crime to include verbal as well as physical incidents, along with a couple of other things, the group of potential plaintiffs that could Sue or that could bring these cases was much, much larger.
Speaker 1 00:33:45 So for example, homelessness was a potential victim category. If you attack homeless people that said something like get out of the way you bomb that could at least theoretically be a hate crime homeless people were also very overrepresented among the perps and the other hate crime cases. I believe 22% of them were what the report called unhoused. So you had homeless people shouting something, you bitch at someone who fell in another category. And then if that person responded, they were a potential perpetrator. I'm not sure how often that that double offense occurred, but it certainly was possible. And that, that was what we were saying. And I think that's what you'd be seeing in some of the real and what was reported in many of the fate cases coming from the camp. So the more you intensify, the perception of victimization, I think the more pseudo victimization you'll get.
Speaker 0 00:34:37 So what you found is that around a third of the hoaxes were taking place on campus. We don't know how many, you know, possibly as many as a third of the reported, uh, hate crimes are also taking on, uh, happening on campus. Whereas as you mentioned, maybe just 1% of the U S population is studying at a university. Um, when we were talking right before the interview, you had said that you thought that the, uh, that the book was, was kind of dry. I actually have to, to disagree. And maybe it's because as, as mentioned, you really had a wonderful, uh, narrator for hate crime hoax, but, um, it can be a bit depressing, but I also found a bunch of, a little bit of humor in the way that you described some of the hoaxes and the predictable manner in which, uh, they, they play.
Speaker 0 00:35:37 So that was, uh, that was kind of fun, but the predictability also raises the question given, uh, it seems the likelihood that these hoaxes invariably, um, do get found out or oftentimes do get found out, um, wouldn't that be discouraging perpetrators from attempting schemes in the first place, or is it perhaps the relatively minor coverage of the collapse, uh, in relation to, you know, the big fanfare when, uh, when so-called hoaxes are our first, uh, announced, or is it perhaps just the simple fact that as you mentioned, so many of these are happening on college campus and the people who are trying to, to perpetrate these hoaxes are, you know, immature and unsophisticated.
Speaker 1 00:36:29 Well, I mean, not to be cynical, but you're making one assumption there, which is that most of these hoaxes do get found out. I mean, so right now, I mean, I'm at maybe 10 to 15% of the most high profile cases and that's 10% of the cases. So, I mean, I like to think that that's the rate of hate crime hopes. I actually think it's probably pretty close. This would be concentrated among dramatic notable incidents, but I mean that we are, we are making an assumption there. I mean, it could easily be that many more of the other 90 plus percent of cases that don't result in a conviction did not occur. I mean, the, the, the swastika written on the side of the black athletic dorm is just reported as a hate offense and budgets were increased. So, I mean, we'd really, we'd really have to know kind of what the control is there.
Speaker 1 00:37:16 Um, I don't, I don't necessarily think we do. Um, I also think that one of the reasons you see this so often on the campus, or so often in a big city, like Seattle, big left leaning city, is that there really isn't much chance of serious punishment. So, I mean, generally when hate crime hoaxes are found out on campus, what you'll see is a misdemeanor charge for falsification of a report. If that, um, one of the things I noticed during the writing of the book and as a fairly ethical scholar, I didn't include these cases as focuses. I will note, but was that a lot of cases seem to just disappear or in, I mean, so there'd be a report I believe was at bowling green where a young, attractive black woman said she was walking down the street when a group of white frat guys chased her screaming about Donald Trump and threw rocks that are her phrase was like a dog and so on down the line.
Speaker 1 00:38:06 Um, and that, that never resulted in anything. It never resulted in a hopes claim and it never resulted in a conviction. A prosecution my guess, would be working at, you know, a top 300 college in a state use system. There's no way they didn't have cameras on the buildings around, you know, the BGSU main campus that would've noticed whether or not there was a racial fight involving four or five people, the minority victim. Um, so in, in a case like that, nothing happens at all. It's just, it slides under the rug it's gone permanently. There was another case, uh, San Diego state university, if I have this one, correct, where a woman said that people probably racist stole her car and there was, there was a man, I mean, people were going through the parking garages, student newspaper got involved, local newspaper got involved, which is how I heard about the case.
Speaker 1 00:38:53 And they found her car three spots away. She'd obviously just mis-marked, it went gone on with her life. And then this whole conversation began about, did their racist bring it back. And that again was never a case that led to a conviction or anything on that order. So I wouldn't overestimate how many of these actually lead to some kind of brutal social sanction? I mean, it might be that, you know, 10% of the high profiles, 2% overall is not the full rate of homes. First of all. And secondarily, even in some of the cases that were hopes as it almost certainly were hoaxes, you, you don't exactly see six months inside. Like you normally do for an a or B misdemeanor. I mean, you see nothing. So the question would be what's the disincentive. I mean, you're made very high profile in the local media for a while. Three months later, you're exposed an agate type at the bottom of the bottom of the leisure and pet cat section. And then you go on with your life, you have a misdemeanor ticket. I don't really see that there's a disincentive structure. They're just coming from almost that Randy and market perspective that would cause people to do anything.
Speaker 0 00:39:59 Yeah, it's interesting. I think it was maybe four, uh, four, maybe five years ago when I first came to the Atlas society. Um, there were some of the students that were involved with our programs. One was at St. Olaf's university. And, uh, there was apparently some huge, um, accusation that a student was having racist notes, put on their car, put on their backpack. And, uh, and it, it, wasn't just this isolated incident. The very next day, there were massive, uh, protests
Speaker 1 00:40:51 Installed here a little bit.
Speaker 3 00:41:21 We seem to be having some technical difficulties. Uh, please stand. Well-being trying to get back, Jennifer, sorry about all this folks. So while we have Jennifer, uh, trying to reconnect, so we don't have everyone just sort of sitting on the line. How about, I, uh, feel some questions for you to answer that way. Uh, we can see what's going on. Um, this is a comment from YouTube Francis EBAC, uh, says reporting a crime that did not happen. I think it's illegal in most states lying to the police is a crime by it in itself. But what does this do to those who are genuinely the victim of crimes?
Speaker 1 00:42:46 Well, yeah, I think, I think that's a critical point. So I'm not one of the points that I always make when I discuss the book is that I'm not denying that racism exists or that crime occurs. I don't get very woke and guilty about this, but it's still something to remember. I mean, the majority of sexual assaults, for example, whatever that majority size might be, or the majority of hate crime claims are obviously based in reality. Uh, the sort of glib example I sometimes use during speeches is that if someone claims that they got beaten up, uh, outside a tough country bar or an urban black club at closing time, that almost certainly occurred. I mean, the cops need to go take a look at that. So in that context, obviously both people that are on, you know, the law and order kind of right-leaning side of this and people that do care about the actual victims of criminal offenses should have no patience whatsoever for these hoaxers who make it harder for other people to have their stories heard.
Speaker 1 00:43:43 I mean, I mentioned eight or nine of those stories in a row beginning with Jessie Smollett and going on down the list. And there are many more, I mean, Goucher college and the university of Wisconsin Parkside with the nooses, a key in college with the death threats, a Drake university instead of duke university. So on, uh, Oberlin where one of the student leaders on campus spray painted things like tranny, go home, targeting herself or himself, uh, I guess, over, across the buildings, all of that makes it much harder for people that are in law enforcement to when they hear a case like this, especially on a campus, take it especially seriously. Yeah. That that's a real problem. If someone is telling the truth. Um, my, one of my suggestions in the book is that people actually start enforcing the law. That if you file a false police report, you'll be charged with the highest count associated with that. I think after a couple of hoaxers get a $60,000 fine or a year in jail, I mean, you'd see a drop-off that would help almost everybody Looks like Jennifer's back.
Speaker 3 00:44:57 Jennifer, can you heroes? Okay. There still appears to be some technical issues on her end. So we'll just field another, uh, question. So this comes from Jeffrey rambled. Have you heard about the status of lawsuits about the kids from 10 Kentucky and that big hoax they had sued the media companies last I heard.
Speaker 1 00:45:22 Yeah, that's correct. Uh, I'm actually really familiar with that case, which is known in Kentucky as the Covington Catholic case or the Covington Catholic hopes. That was the situation where these kids from a private school in Kentucky, a bit preppy, but a group of nice guys that mostly athletes had gone to Washington DC to participate in the March for life. And as they were leaving the event, the allegation was that they had surrounded this old native American guy for no reason, they were chanting at him. They were smirking in his face, potentially spitting on him. They threatened to take his drum away. This is, you know, white privilege and action. And this became a firestorm in the media. I mean, the Washington post wrote about it. I believe the New York times did see it in covered this. I mean like the Covington kids are on TV identified by name.
Speaker 1 00:46:14 These kids are on average 15. Um, and it turned out absolutely none of this had happened. I mean, the Covington Catholic kids were sitting around making dumb jokes and looking at the people in this public Plaza in DC, when someone had come up to them, he didn't like a comment they'd made or some such, it started pounding a drum in the face of one of the kids. And this, this altercated th this developed into an altercation among really three groups of people. There were also a group of black Hebrew Israelites in the Plaza who started teasing both the Covington kids. We eventually started responding and this native guy and some other people he had with them. So these three groups of males probably making jokes, the kids were getting the worst of it. And that was it. Then they all parted ways. And the kids I guess, went home, but the, the take on this was, you know, how dare they in the face of a person of color.
Speaker 1 00:47:03 And again, dozens of hours of national mass media, the coming kids sued. I mean, they pointed out that they didn't initiate the fight or the argument that it wasn't, you know, a big damn deal in the first place, uh, that they were miners who'd been exposed. Who'd been publicized in this fashion. Well, last I heard they won. I mean, they settled with the WaPo. I know Nick Sandeman, I believe is the kid jokingly said online, or someone said for him that he was the highest paid employee at the Washington post. Um, I don't know what happened to the other lawsuits. I'm honestly not up on that, but I, I encourage people to do this actually. Um, when we, and I, I almost feel bad. I'm talking to a libertarian audiences, you know, conservative writer and encouraging port lawsuits. But I mean, at a certain point, like when you look at the, these things like this woman, Emma Sarley, that was fired from her job, because she got into an altercation at a dog park where two people were yelling, mildly rude things.
Speaker 1 00:47:59 And this guy, Fred Joseph contacted her boss, who we knew casually and who was on Twitter and said that she was a racist and link this cell phone tape, and hundreds of thousands of people from both their pages are following and commenting. If it turns out it, it already has, if it turns out that any portion of that was fake or was exaggerated or was cut out of context, if I were Sarley, I would Sue Joseph, I would Sue my boss, my former boss. I would Sue any media outlet that ran with this story, because this, this kind of nonsense leading to what's called the cancel mob. It happens all the time. It's pretty damaging. At least the Covington kids responded, uh, last sentence on this, by the way, I thought the kids were pretty restrained. I mean, I was an athlete in high school and if some random guy came up to one of our varsity teams beating on a drum and chatting in a foreign language would have beaten the crap out of him. I mean, race wouldn't have really mattered all that much. So I thought the kids were pretty restrained and now it looks like they got some money for it. Good job.
Speaker 4 00:48:54 Um, so, well for, can you hear me okay, sorry about that little, uh, technical difficulties. Um, I, we have another 10, 15 minutes or so Lawrence, I don't know if we'd already jumped into some of the audience questions, but I want to make sure that we also get to your book taboo. Uh, and one of the, um, the obvious facts that you cover in, in the book, uh, was that white police officers are not going out of their way to murder black suspects, who included as an aside a data point, uh, that was particularly surprising to me, which was that black and Latino officers were in fact more likely to discharge their weapons, um, at suspects of any race than white officers. Did I, did I get that right? And was the difference, um, statistically significant,
Speaker 1 00:49:51 Uh, I believe it was statistically significant. Yeah. I mean that, that's an accurate data point. I mean, the gap definitely existed probably standard 0.05 significance. I'd have to check fryer and the papers on that. Um, but yeah, the, the police abuse narrative just really, wasn't very supportive. I mean, there are two levels to that. So again, we talk about this being sort of a Liberty audience. I mean, should there be any laws regulating frankly, sex and drugs? And so before, I mean, probably not in the majority of cases, so the police are not, there tends to be a sort of blind adherence on the right to the authority state. I think the military, the police, they can do no wrong. I mean, and I don't share that attitude. I have a great deal of respect for the, you know, the fighting women and men in those organizations.
Speaker 1 00:50:37 But like we just drone struck one of our own aid workers because we got advice on targeting from the Taliban. So there there's an element to which those organizations like any other large government organizations need to be reigned in. But with that said, if you're arguing that the people in these organizations are incompetent racist drunks that are murdering black people or something along those lines, no evidence, the bet. And there are businesses that are major books and argued basically that, um, there's no evidence of that whatsoever. I mean, so in the black lives matter chapter of taboo, I try to break down all the core BLM claims. Like there's an epidemic of police murders. Cerno Biko on primetime Fox news said roughly once a day, you know, an unarmed defenseless black man is murdered in his language by the cops. And so that would break down to let's say 370 a year that's fantasy.
Speaker 1 00:51:26 I mean, in every recent year on record, the number of unarmed black men shot by police officers, fatally has been between 10 and 30. Uh, the number of unarmed people total, including all races and sexes has been under a hundred, although sometimes close to that figure. There are less than a thousand people shot by police in a typical year period out of 60 million interactions. Um, less than 250 of them usually are identified as black given the black crime rate. It's a bit higher than the white and Hispanic crime rate that's actually quite proportional. And it just does someone down the line. There was no evidence for any of BOM's major claims. And what you just said was one of the points I made, actually, when you get into the advanced research on this. And I, I didn't do the advanced research on this myself in terms of papers for this book.
Speaker 1 00:52:12 I did some good research and I relied on other people as well. Um, Roland fryer for example, is run a real professional level set of regression models as they're called on this and found that when you adjust for equivalent characteristics, I mean the precinct, which is probably a measure of social class suspect, armed stone down the line, police are 27% more likely to shoot a white suspect than a black suspect. And that really, to some extent, it's just common sense. I mean, I don't, I don't think that some tough cop really loves quote unquote rednecks or brothers all that much. It's not his job, but if you shoot a written neck, you're not going to get the same kind of hysterical mob scene in the streets that you will, if you shoot a same income black guy. So it appears that's actually reflected in police decisions.
Speaker 1 00:52:56 Uh, similarly black and Hispanic officers who have the same training who are pretty good. I mean, there's so much pressure for police jobs that I don't, I don't know what sort of affirmative action effect we're seeing in a lot of big cities. Like there are a lot of people lined up outside the precinct on iron day. Um, they are not any less tough as cops, but they are also at some level probably aware that they might not be seeing the same penalties. They're more likely to discharge at. And by the way, looking at police prosecutions, I'm not even sure that's true. These are perceptions created by the media of a problem that doesn't exist. But within the constraints of what most people believe black cops, Hispanic cops are just as likely to shoot as white cops, if not more so. And in fact, the more so effective, one of the papers was significant, but the big one to me was the 27% more likely to shoot whites, which is one of those things that would absolutely be nationwide hysterically commented on reality.
Speaker 1 00:53:50 If, if it cuts in the other direction, we've actually seen people with that fryer paper, try to claim that what he found was racism against black people, because he asked him about a couple of different variables. And one of them was like, do the police murder you? But another one was, do you experience a slightly more profanity or shoving during an interaction please interaction. And he found out that black people were 16% more likely to face these very minor levels of violence. And so they're actually, you can find these New York times headline saying things like criminologists finds that police stops harder on black people, but any such finding ignores the fact that white guys were 30% more likely to get shot. So it's a complex picture at the very least BLM, pretty much unsupported.
Speaker 4 00:54:39 Interesting. So, um, you've been teaching at colleges and currently at a historically black university for many, many years. And you contend that the primary thing holding back many black students is not racism, but a heartfelt belief that, um, the white world is, is a pervasively hostile place. You, you wrote, uh, America's opportunities are close to them, not because of widespread racism, but because of their erroneous beliefs in widespread racism. Could you, what are some of the consequences of that you said, for example, uh, less likely to go and pursue a certain career, um, paths or even certain majors?
Speaker 1 00:55:26 Well, I think that this, this combined, so a couple of things combined, like what what'd you call oppositional culture and sociologists, isn't a radical idea or one that originates with me, um, combined with affirmative action effects. Once you get into a college and said all good. I mean, that's a situation where they effects obviously do apply. When you look at demographics, a lot of things do work together to hold back black people. And I mean, you can do the different set of things work at least as intensively to hold back, poor whites, by the way. But these are, these are very different in both cases from what you think of as systemic racism. Um, so I, I don't think it's much of a secret. I mean, I might be, you know, educating quote unquote people outside of the black community a little bit, but the idea that the, the mainstream USA is extraordinarily racist and hostile, uh, is well-supported by data.
Speaker 1 00:56:18 I mean, every time this question is asked in any coherent form, uh, about 50% of African-Americans 26% of 52% believe that HIV was created in the lab by the feds to kill black people. So, I mean, that's the kind of baseline that you're talking about. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of gun toting white libertarians believe this kind of stuff too saucers are following us around. It's not, but in the black case, it's especially damaging because it's gone on for many years and it affects attitudes. Um, there was a recent poll of African-American adults where black people were asked if a black kid and a white kid with the same credentials apply to the same college as the black kid, more or less likely to get in 5% of blacks said more, 65% said less. In reality, of course the black guy would have about 150 point sat advantage of the typical college.
Speaker 1 00:57:07 This is this isn't concealed. And hasn't been since Bucky. So these perceptions of constant racism I've found to have a real effect. And there are other researchers that have as well. I mean, Eric Hallsman, the political scientist recently did an experiment where he just read a passage. I think it was Ta-Nehisi totes woke writers to black students and then asked them how much they thought they could succeed in life. And just reading that as opposed to a standard article about black success was in the wars against the whites back in the day, Shaka, Zulu, and so on just reading that passage drop their perceived level of success, but something like 15%. So I think that this, yeah, there's a real impact to this, to these courses, constantly teaching people that, you know, their white friends and debating buddies and sleeping partners actually have this sort of hidden, magical privilege.
Speaker 1 00:57:52 And anything they take from your culture is completely invalid and stolen by them. Systemic racism is everywhere. What we actually find kind of condensing this to a sentence or two, is that what systemic racism means in practice is that there are performance gaps between people, um, Ebrum Kendi and Robin de Angelo. And these sort of people have said this very openly, that if you're looking at something like sat test scoring gaps, there are two options. Either one group is their language is something like deeply inferior. They mean genetically inferior, or there's some kind of hidden bias somewhere in the test. The reality is that there's a third option, you know, did group B study less for the test. Uh, and I find that when you adjust for things like age region, study time, the gaps that are attributed to racism almost totally closed. So yes, in short, I think the idea that all of this is racism, which results in a lot of effort, being directed into useless things, public protests, against problems that don't happen and so on, um, as opposed to studying or working out in the gym for them. And we've got a slight edge and athletics right now, but I think that is a bigger issue than actual, hidden white people that hate black people. Yeah. I don't, I don't think there are many in that category.
Speaker 4 00:58:59 So you also cover immigration policy in, in taboo. And recently we've seen a kind of an example of a fake hate crime with purported coverage of an officer's supposedly whipping, uh, black Haitians, which certain media outlets claimed park and back to the days of slavery. But leaving that aside, uh, there's a certain view among open border, a contingent of libertarians to say nothing of, uh, of the left that maintains that immigrants are no more likely to take advantage of welfare programs than other citizens. What, uh, what did you find? What does the data show?
Speaker 1 00:59:41 Well, this all depends on who you're comparing and so on, but in general, no. I mean, that's, that's flatly false. Um, let me see if I can pull this up actually, without wasting a bunch of time. Yeah. If you just Google more than 50% of immigrants on welfare or 60% of immigrants on welfare, you'll find a perfectly neutral USA today piece siting center for immigration studies on one side, the best left groups on the other side, then just points out that 60% of immigrants are on welfare. There's no hostility toward immigrants contained in that statement. The USA is a massive welfare state and immigrants often don't speak English. So if you come to the USA from Haiti and you have to bone up on your English skills for four years, you're going to be receiving social benefits and you may be a hardworking top, man. There's, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's silly to deny. I mean, that's my shortest answer so far. I don't think that's denied by anyone in political science,
Speaker 4 01:00:34 Um, perhaps on political science, but certainly, you know, in the media, uh, there, there is a, uh, a piece of conventional wisdom that, um, that immigrants and illegal immigrants are no more likely to be on welfare or to be seeking welfare than the native born Americans. And you take a harder look at the data than I have. So
Speaker 1 01:00:59 Yeah, I mean, that's not true. I mean, it, there, you can get virtually any result by massaging data. I mean, there was a study recently that found that illegal immigrants don't have a higher crime rate than equivalent Americans. But as I recall, the equivalent Americans, they used were, I think it was deep Southern whites and inner city blacks. Someone might correct me on some specific detail of that, but they were comparing people in similar transitional regions of the country with similar income levels and so on. And it may be true that illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than you see in Harlem or in Appalachian hollers, but that's not the crime rate for 90% of the country. So I mean, even if you're arguing that illegal immigrants don't perform any worse than equally financially troubled Americans, the question would be, why would we bring in a very large group of financially troubled people who perform on par with our least successful citizens?
Speaker 1 01:01:57 So I have, and again, this is completely race neutral. I mean, we're talking about Afghani immigration right now. Something many people seem to forget, although Tucker Carlson's had fun pointing this out, but is that Afghanistan is entirely a west Asian Caucasian country. I mean, posture, June warriors often have green or blue eyes. So for me as a black man, there's an element of absurdity to this in that people are advising me that it's my moral duty to take in people from Caucasian failed states like Afghanistan and Venezuela, because they are people of color too, or something like this. And I don't think that outside of political wrangling there's any logical argument that, you know, Creole, Hispanics are path and fighters are, you know, fellow descendants of the motherland or something like that. This is, this is what I sometimes think of as takiya, which is a term used in Arabic politics for intentional conscious lying, where the liar knows they're lying, but where the goal is considered important enough to justify why I want to popularize the word Tekia, but a claim that, yeah, get it out there as much as possible, but a claim that illegal immigrants don't use welfare or commit crimes more than Americans is takiya.
Speaker 1 01:03:07 There's no evidence of that, that I've seen. If you want to play games with violence versus property crime. And so on, it's worth noting that illegal immigration is itself a crime. So the crime rate for illegal immigrants, if we are going to take the law and order perspective for a second would be 100%, uh, in general, I find that argument on convincing.
Speaker 4 01:03:27 So, uh, Wilford, I'd love to also, just as we're wrapping up here, maybe, um, take a step back and talk about you and your origin story and what got you interested in the subject matter, uh, your path to teaching. Cause I know you also have a background as an entrepreneur, so a little bit about what brought you to this, to this state and also, um, what is, what's next for you in terms of your, your writing and your research?
Speaker 1 01:03:57 Well, I mean, I've had a very interesting life. Actually. My mom was a Chicago ward, which is a wealthy black family, but she herself, I didn't interact much with the family, very active in the 1960s revolution and so on and became an inner city school teacher. She taught in Chicago and on the east side of Aurora, Illinois, the second largest city, he said, and, um, that's the non gang affiliated version of the neighborhood sign. I will note, but I mean, so I grew up in all the hood areas where she taught and I mean, I was a competent athlete, but a bit of a nerd, but a funny guy. And I liked living there. I saw that. So, I mean, I had that combination of upper and lower class perspectives, which helped me avoid modeling bourgeois respectability. And so I did a range of interesting things really throughout life.
Speaker 1 01:04:38 I mean, I went to Latin America briefly with the American field service after high school. Um, I went to a couple of different colleges chasing things I was interested in when I went for the PhD. I graduated from law school at around. I think it was 20. I was, I was a precocious lad and it doesn't take much to get through the Chicago or east Aurora public school systems, to be honest. I mean I could read and I was fast. So they moved me along and at any rate right after law school, I decided to go for the PhD at Southern Illinois university, which is what eventually led me into teaching. But because of an illness in my family that brought me back to Chicago, I did a range of things before getting the final academic job, as you've mentioned. Um, at one point I was a canvas manager for the human rights campaign.
Speaker 1 01:05:25 So the large gay and gender rights group would recruit these sort of aggressive young people to travel to mostly hostile areas were based on the south side of Chicago. We did these camping canvases all the time to round up support for gay marriage and things like this. So a lot of scuffling, a lot of quote-unquote office relationships. I did this for a couple of years, a very fun job. And then I moved into almost the flip side of that, which is the sort of the semi elite sales and trading floor sector. I worked in Marcus Evans, International's American headquarters and the Tribune tower in Chicago. And this again was sort of this very, very much Phoenix media, all those companies Goldman, I didn't work for them. I'd bet they'd apply. But I mean, it's very much a little bit of a boiler room element in the Chicago scene at this time.
Speaker 1 01:06:06 So, I mean, I had like my desk and two phones to shout into and so on. Um, and when I got done with this, I've made a reasonable amount of money and was finishing up my PhD. And I, I had thought about what I was going to do. I'd done some inner city teaching myself. Um, I'd worked in the city colleges system might advise friends and, uh, public, you know, high problem schools. I didn't really want to do it. Uh, so I applied for standard academic jobs and took one basically. I mean, a state university in Kentucky offered me a position. And it was an interesting one in that we're a couple of minutes or maybe an hour from actual Appalachia where a historically black college. So for both of those reasons, we had a good group of students that I thought I could actually give some help to.
Speaker 1 01:06:51 And I've been here ever since. Um, I think because it's a black and Appalachian institution, there's not a lot of wokeness. I mean, most people are politically left. I'm sure. But I, there hasn't been a massive amount of problems with my books. It's more, the question is, will he be in class on time? You know, we gotta get these kids, you know, into a better life. Um, so what am I going to do going forward? I have a couple of new book deals actually. Uh, the question is because I've, I've frankly been late on a lot of things recently, a lot of work coming in at once. So I'm trying to get projects out there, but I mean, I'm working on a book about education and I'm working on a book about policing. And I was recently asked if I'd be interested in writing a version of sort of the old 12 lies.
Speaker 1 01:07:30 My teacher told me, but from kind of the political center right this time. So looking at some of the nonsense, we now see in schools, you know, CRT just means this or the Indians were peaceful or Joe McCarthy didn't find any communist, just the new generation of lies mostly from the other side. And I think that one would probably be a best sellers. I mean that those are potentially coming down the pipe now. So I've done writing. How can, what's the best way for us to follow your work? Well, I'm extremely accessible if you Google my name or preferably Bing or GaN decks or whatnot, it, I mean, Google is a terrible company, but, um, my I'm Wilfred Riley, you see that at the top of the screen, I'm extremely accessible. I I'm on Twitter. I have more than 45,000 followers on Facebook. You add my personal page, it's will, rather than Wilfred Riley. Uh, if I recall correctly, you know, my website as part of the college websites, I mean, I like most young, most relatively young wired in people. All you have to do to find me and argue with me is search my site or my, my social. And I look forward to people doing that.
Speaker 4 01:08:33 Great. Um, well perhaps are you on clubhouse?
Speaker 1 01:08:36 No, I actually, I feel like I'm wired in enough kind of like if you were on clubhouse and you wanted me to have a conversation, I would probably link in, I've done that with locals, but I mean, these sites keep proliferating. I don't feel like I'm saying anything edgy enough on mainstream social media to really get kicked off yet. So, no, I'm not, I'm not unplug house. I may set up a locals. Um, I was actually asked recently if I'd be willing to set up an only fans, I, I mean, I thought that was kind of a joke. I don't know what I do, like read off stats, you know, topless, but I mean, there's a lot of it out there. I'm pretty cool with the basic Twitter, Facebook and so on. I'm on YouTube. I just have a couple of videos uploaded, but again, pretty easy to find. And I look forward to talking to a lot of you guys.
Speaker 4 01:09:21 Excellent. Well, um, thank you for making time out of your busy teaching and a writing schedule to talk to us today. Again, the books are taboo, 10 facts you can't talk about, but you can talk about Dr. Riley as well as hate-crime hoax. And again, I highly recommend the audible version. Somehow. He, he, uh, lucked out with a very famous narrator. So they're, they're, uh, not at all dry, they're actually a joy and, um, even a tad humorous to me. So, uh, Dr. Riley, thank you. I appreciate your joining us,
Speaker 1 01:09:59 Right. Sounds good. Thanks for having me guys.
Speaker 4 01:10:01 Thank you. And uh, I want to thank all of you who joined us and stuck with us through our technical difficulties. Uh, want to encourage you to come back and join us next week? Um, our senior scholar professor Richard Saltzman is going to be talking to Carrie Ann beyond D and then the week after that, I'm going to be talking to Blake Harris about, uh, his book on Palmer, Luckey and Oculus VR, the history of the future. And don't forget the gala is coming up November 4th. It's really just a few weeks away now. So make sure to check that
[email protected] and hope to see you there. And next week,
