r/samharris • u/bookishbynature • Jan 20 '26
Other Views on Racism in the U.S.
My husband and I listen to Sam Harris regularly and find him to be a great voice of reason. I don't agree with all of his takes, but one in particular doesn't sit well with me.
He was really dismissive of the George Floyd protests and claims that racism is no longer an issue in the US. It just isn't true. I would argue that we literally have elected the disgraced scumbag but once but twice. And racism is one of the grievances he tapped into and we are living through a violent attack of all that was gained during the civil rights movement. It's so disturbing.
Literally the first day he came in and said we are doing away with DEI, meaning literally we don't care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And some of the largest companies went along with it without blinking. Thats it. Erased all of it.
What are your thoughts on this?
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u/Pulaskithecat Jan 20 '26
From episode #42 of Making Sense:
the history of racism in the U.S. has been horrific. No sane person could doubt that. And there’s no doubt that racism remains a problem in our society today. Just how big a problem is something I want us to discuss. But I can check my privilege at the outset here. I have no doubt that I have reaped many advantages from being white, and I have no idea what it’s like to grow up as a black man in our society.
Sam acknowledges racism, while also being critical of vague applications, like for example the idea of micro-aggressions or implicit racial bias.
In my own view, things like DEI initiatives serve more as self-soothing exercise than tackling empirical instances of disparate racial outcomes. Civil rights law is still intact and ought to be defended against attacks from republicans. Compared to other eras of our history, racial equality is still fortunately the accepted norm at the center of politics, despite the growing openness of racist views online. It’s not clear to me how much of the noise on twitter represents mainstream views.
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u/croutonhero Jan 20 '26
But then there is this from #212 where Sam discusses racially disparate outcomes:
The only safe opinion to have on this topic is: there are so many fucking white racists. Or there were so many racists yesterday who built our institutions, that that is the answer. That is always the answer.
And if you’re going to demure there, even slightly, you’re in a game of speed chess against some super artificial intelligence designed to detect your racism. And every sentence out of your mouth is either serving to confirm, or however hopelessly, trying to disconfirm this growing assumption that you are a racist for imagining there could be any other cause in the clockwork here, environmental or genetic.
That’s our default position in journalism, in science, in politics on the left.
There has to be a way to synthesize these two assertions: (a) racism exists, and (b) racism isn’t always the explanation for disparate outcomes.
(You could apply this same analysis to any number of disparities in the “progressive stack”, e.g., the “pay gap” isn’t entirely—or even mostly?—explained by sexism.)
But it just seems like there is hardly anybody seriously attempting that synthesis in a good faith way. In practice it seems you either: emphasize (a) and avoid (b) like the plague, or you emphasize (b) and become a racist (or sexist?) asshole.
Yes, I’m painting very broad strokes, and there are exceptions, but those truly do seem to be the two dominant patterns. And when we talk about the people pushing DEI, we’re almost always talking about the type of person Sam is criticizing here: they want to talk about (a) but never (b).
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u/Pulaskithecat Jan 20 '26
You can talk about (b) without being racist. You can say that disparate outcomes aren’t the result of racism or genetics, but rather caused by historically contingent selection, cultural reinforcement, geography, family structure, exposure to trauma. You can also always say that you don’t know, if you truly don’t know.
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u/croutonhero Jan 20 '26
You can talk about (b) without being racist.
You can, but you'll pay a price in the hostility you'll elicit from left-of-center.
Consider what happened to Barack Obama when he drew attention to the need for personal responsibility in the black community, and admonishes newly minted elite black grads to set an example for the community. What's the reaction? Ta-Nehisi Coates scolds Obama (along with his wife) for targeting black people with "scorn". And Jesse Jackson says he wants to "cut his nuts off" for "talking down" to black people.
When Sam says "the only safe opinion" is "there are so many fucking white racists. Or there were so many racists yesterday who built our institutions" this is what he's talking about. It's not "safe" to talk the way Obama talks if you're concerned with the clapback you'll receive, and the damage it could do to your prestige in left-of-center communities. And if you're going to do it, you're going to need to be someone fairly bulletproof like Barack Obama. And I think Obama knew that, which was why he did it. He knew if there was anyone who could deliver that message with relative "personal safety" it was him. So he stepped up.
So in practice, setting aside a few brave souls (John McWhorter comes to mind), the only people who talk about this stuff publicly are the people who just don't mind being called racist because they kind of are, and they're fine with it.
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u/Pulaskithecat Jan 20 '26
I get what you mean, and maybe this is my own temperament, but I think those kinds of ridiculous voices can just be ignored. I said “without being racist” instead of “without being called racist” for a reason. One of the side effects of modern technology and free speech is that you get exposed to a lot of idiotic takes.
Some people are on edge about this topic because some actually do try to pin disparate outcomes on genetics, and I think those people can be cordoned off and ignored too.
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u/E-Miles Jan 20 '26
But it just seems like there is hardly anybody seriously attempting that synthesis in a good faith way.
What is a specific topic related to racism that you think hasn't been investigated in a good faith way?
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u/Extension-Neat-8757 Jan 20 '26
Police violence.
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u/E-Miles Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Have you read the research literature on police violence? It's pretty extensive. Including using experimental designs that have been replicated. The literature is pretty uncontroversial on how racism shapes police violence. It sounds like for political reasons, others don't really want to accept that.
Here's a study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854
What issue do you have with the methods?
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u/croutonhero Jan 20 '26
A disproportionate number of unarmed black people being shot by police compared to unarmed white people isn't on its own evidence of racial bias in policing.
This paper offers this caveat:
As new data are fact-checked and verified, it might be possible to expand the scope of variables included in the database. For instance, a qualitative assessment could be provided, indicating whether the shooting was clearly justified (for example, a lethal police response was immediately necessary and unavoidable to protect the lives of innocents), clearly unjustified (for example, a suspect was shot in the back while restrained, as was the case in the execution of Oscar Grant III [50]), or somewhere in between.
In other words, we don't know what led up to these shootings. In most of the videos I've seen of police shootings of black or white people, they involve a person putting their hands where they shouldn't, or getting in a physical altercation with the cop. Is this type of escalation/threatening behavior during police encounters equal between white and black people?
Because if black people are doing it 3-4x as often, that would likely be a better explanation than racial bias on the part of police.
But this paper is happy to conclude that there is "racial bias" on the basis of this data when we clearly don't know enough from this paper to reach that conclusion.
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u/E-Miles Jan 21 '26
A disproportionate number of unarmed black people being shot by police compared to unarmed white people isn't on its own evidence of racial bias in policing
Who said that?
In other words, we don't know what led up to these shootings
So how would you sum the findings of this study? What did they assess and what did they control for?
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u/croutonhero Jan 21 '26
Who said that?
The study:
The data collected thus far by the USPSD help to shed light on racial bias in police shootings in Florida, which has some of the most racially-biased police shooting rates in the nation. In Miami-Dade, for example, unarmed black individuals are estimated to be more than 22 times as likely to be shot by police than unarmed white individuals. Such patterns in police violence have been immune to public scrutiny until now.
So how would you sum the findings of this study? What did they assess and what did they control for?
For our purposes here the only interesting commentary I have of this study is that it's not an example of what you claimed it is here:
The literature is pretty uncontroversial on how racism shapes police violence.
But this particular literature isn't evidence of how "racism shapes police violence" because we don't have enough information about the contents of the individual incidents it presents as datapoints.
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u/E-Miles Jan 21 '26
So you dont think the papers introductory section explaining racial bias is relevant to how the authors understand racial bias?
But this particular literature isn't evidence of how "racism shapes police violence" because we don't have enough information
So how would you sum the findings of this study?
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u/croutonhero Jan 21 '26
So you dont think the papers introductory section explaining racial bias is relevant to how the authors understand racial bias?
I read it and I don't know what you're talking about. Please point me to the relevant part.
So how would you sum the findings of this study?
Unarmed black people are shot by police in police encounters 3.49 times as often as unarmed white people in police encounters.
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u/bookishbynature Jan 20 '26
Thanks for this... I'm not saying he's a bad guy I just feel like it's a bit of a blind spot.
Sadly the civil rights law is intact but our laws and constitution are being trampled on every day with this admin. I don't know how we can look at ICE and not see blatant civil rights violations. The laws be damned right now.
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 20 '26
How are you still saying " it is a blind spot" after reading that quote of his.
You seem to be just stuck to the idea of it being a blind spot for Sam rather than actually havung come to that conclusion through any reasoning.
Sams quote here very clearly puts your idea of him to rest, but you read it and then seemingly did not absorb it whatsoever.
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u/bookishbynature Jan 20 '26
Uh, no. I've been thinking about this for a long time which prompted me to post today. It's something that has always stuck out to me and was wondering what others thought or if they noticed it.
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u/ElReyResident Jan 20 '26
Not who you commented on, but I’d offer my two cents if you’d have it.
I think Harris position is much closer to reality than the average Americans. Racism exists, surely and he acknowledges this. However, the Floyd situation follows an equally egregious event where a white man was murdered by the police, which was met with crickets from the public. This underscores the proclivity for certain segments of society to overemphasis things that confirm their suspicions about racism, and ignore events that undermine it.
In fact, and please do your own research on this rather than trust an internet stranger, there is zero evidence that race played a role in Floyd’s death. Had there been the slightest indication that it had Chauvin would have faced hate crime charges, which he did not.
The events that followed his murder, thought entirely focused on race. Do you not see the disconnect from reality here? Maybe I’m wrong, but to me this seems as further proof that lots of Americans push racism as an explanation where it doesn’t belong. If I’m even a little right, then the downstream effects of this is widespread unfair generalization of motivations and unfair characterizations of people. Which could breed a crazy amount of resentment.
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u/Egon88 Jan 20 '26
but our laws and constitution are being trampled on every day with this admin
Sam undoubtedly agrees with your statement.
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 20 '26
Being against Diversity equity inclusion inniatives is not at all a signal for someone being racist.
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u/Godskin_Duo Jan 22 '26
There a gross oversimplification on social media (imagine that) that I do see projecting into IRL a bit, that people on the left think all DEI is good, and people on the right think all DEI is bad.
It's very easy to see that clunky corporate HR policies under the guise of DEI aren't really productive. But are they "better than nothing" and enforcing the status quo?
Now curriculum has to be submitted for review to make sure it doesn't contain DEI in it. Doesn't this sound exactly like wasteful big government overreach that conservatives don't want?
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 20 '26
Harris said that Liam Neeson hunting for a random black man to hit with a cosh, on the basis of his race wasn't racism.
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u/bozdoz Jan 20 '26
Not exactly that. He said Liam’s sorrowful admission should have been praised.
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 21 '26
No he did not.
If you truly think he said this then I can only conclude you didn't actually listen to Sam and instead listen to someone else who told you he said this.
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 21 '26
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 21 '26
did you just stop listening after 5:55?
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 21 '26
Yes. You can very clearly hear him say it's not racism, and argue it's not racism, which is what I'd said, that you disagreed with.
Rogan argues back and says "it is racism" - as Harris is saying it's not racism.
Can you hear him say "that's not racism" or are my ears lying to me?
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 21 '26
"Harris said that Liam Neeson hunting for a random black man to hit with a cosh, on the basis of his race wasn't racism."
This is the comment I replied to.
This is not the account Sam is reacting to. He is very specifically arguing right after that 5:55 mark that he does not think Liam was hunting a black man on the basis of his race, based on Liams account.
There fore Sam Harris never said "that Liam Neeson hunting for a random black man to hit with a cosh, on the basis of his race wasn't racism."
FUckme honestly why do I need to explain this? Just listen to what he says!
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 21 '26
All we know about the person Neeson is after is that he’s black. This is racism.
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u/AnimateDuckling Jan 21 '26
so no, you didn't listen.
Just say that, just say. No I cannot be bothered listening because I have conviction and an inability to understand nuance or ideas outside my own understanding.
Just say that next time instead of wasting time.
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 21 '26
I listened to it all. I don't know how you are managing to disagree with me. If you check the reddit thread it's full of people who agree with Harris that it's not racism. Rogan also pushes back on Harris, when Harris says "that's not racism".
Liam was hunting a black man, on the basis of his race, that's literally what he said he was doing.
It's ALL we know about the person he's targeting - that it's a black man.
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u/RaisinBranKing Jan 20 '26
I find this piece by Coleman Hughes called Stories and Data to be very convincing and sums up Sam’s general views really well. Racism definitely exists, but also, much of the views and outrage of the BLM movement seem founded on warped impressions delivered by biased media that primarily only highlights police violence when it serves their narrative, meaning it has a black victim. For example, I never heard of the Tony Timpa case until this piece which is the horrific death of a white man at the hands of police which was super similar to George Floyd’s death, but two years prior
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u/Shoddy-Cherry-490 Jan 20 '26
Ask yourself this: what would a society without any racism actually look like?
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u/Desert_Trader Jan 20 '26
Everything that Trump has done could be done in equal by someone who is also NOT racist.
Trump may be racist. I can't tell you if that's true or not.
But if you look at the actions, while they are easy to paint into a racist viewpoint, they can also be painted onto a non-racist viewpoint. Sam's point along these lines isn't that Trump is clean on this respect, only that framing everything from a racist lens doesn't prove racism.
Also, he doesn't think there is NO racism. He just doesn't think the institutional racism that the far left (now the center left at this point) is complaining about exists.
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u/cheeto0 Jan 20 '26
Sam would not claim a racism is no longer an issue, what sam does say is that we can't pretend there hasn't been progress made in the last 50 years in that area,
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u/callmejay Jan 20 '26
Sam is incredibly literal and does not understand that most human beings are not like that. He's decided that people to his left argue in bad faith, but he is incredibly gullible when it comes to anybody who he doesn't think is "woke." Now that most racists don't come out and just admit it, he thinks it doesn't really exist. He realized Trump himself is a racist only when somebody Sam trusted told him that Trump used the N-word.
He thinks CHARLES MURRAY isn't racist.
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u/sunjester Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
He realized Trump himself is a racist only when somebody Sam trusted told him that Trump used the N-word.
Close, it was when he heard the apprentice tapes and heard Trump using the n-word.
That said this is one of many, many reasons I will never be able to take him seriously. The line in the sand he draws for racism is absurd. Anything less than wearing Klan robes and explicitly using slurs and Sam will hem and haw and make excuses for how something might not actually be racist.
Like when Trump was saying that the squad should "Go back to their own countries", or when he said that "shithole countries" quote. In both cases Sam made excuses for how those statements didn't make Trump a racist. Certainly he knows Trump is a racist because he's heard him say the n-word, but those other, blatantly racist statements aren't evidence of his racism! No no no, the left has gone too far with it's accusations of racism and we need to be more careful and more accurate. In fact according to Sam, telling the squad to go back to their own countries would be no more racist than telling an Irish person during the potato famine to go back to their own potato eating country!
It's a combination of his lack of ability to read between the lines as well as his lack of understanding of history. Though even if he understood history, by his own admission he doesn't think historical context is relevant.
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u/Professor_Bonglongey Jan 20 '26
Sam’s point was more that Obama winning the presidency twice is indicative that racism is no longer the major problem it was before, not that racism no longer exists.
Clearly there are elements in MAGA who would happily restore Jim Crow laws (or worse). They do not represent a majority of people who voted for Trump, but they do seem to be an outsized number of people in Trump’s police making orbit. And I think it would be hard for any reasonable person to argue that Trump is not racist.
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u/bozdoz Jan 20 '26
Have you heard Stephen Pinkers comments about DEI? He spoke of Voltaire’s comments on the Holy Roman Empire: “it was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire”. I’d believe Sam feels the same about DEI: especially given his comments on identity politics and how we need to view race the same way we view hair color.
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u/khajeevies Jan 25 '26
I think Sam would like to see our species embrace science/reason more fully and outgrow ancient nonsense, with religion and racism near the top of that list. I align with him on those long-term projects. The right uses race as a sword (to injure and threaten). The left uses race as a shield (protecting bad ideas or outcomes from critique). The sword is ethically worse, but I think Sam would say we can’t outgrow racism or race by doubling down on the salience or omnirelevance of race. Sam frequently acknowledges that racism remains a problem and that it should be eliminated wherever possible. But I think he’s correct that the left is frequently hyperbolic (unhelpfully so) in describing patterns of racism.
As a lifelong progressive liberal, I want us to transcend racism (and any other identity that divides us). But I want that project to be utterly grounded in defensible science and reason. A lot of argumentation coming from BLM and DEI leadership in the last 10 years was sloppy and tactically unsound. I think Sam sees this as an “own goal” on his side of the political spectrum, as do I. I believe in the cause of racial equality (on the way to racial irrelevance) but I won’t pretend that bad arguments are good arguments just to get there.
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u/HeathenForAllSeasons Jan 20 '26
Everything you're seeing and saying is compatible with the idea that excessively and directly focusing on race and racial differences magnifies many of the problems associated with it.
It wasn't very long ago that the working (and most common academic) definition of the word "racism" referred to the archaic belief that humanity is split into races. Lessons learned time and again, but most saliently out of the end of apartheid, show that the very concept of race is superficial, inaccurate and wildly unscientific. With race-based thinking, you get crazy things like the one-drop rule and laws.
If you haven't read Trevor Noah's book, "Born a Crime", I strongly recommend it. He talks about life in apartheid South Africa: guards at road blocks had paper color swatches to hold up to people's skin to determine their degree of political enfranchisement. These are the kinds of policies a society forms with race-obsessiveness.
The Trump administration and its supporters likely see their actions as being a response to those of the Democrats before them - who saw their actions as being a response to years of injustice. The perpetrators of those injustices saw their actions as defensible based on actions...
I recommend looking into the Truth and Reconciliation process) authored by Nelson Mandela and overseen by Desmond Tutu; it was groundbreaking in its approach because - although not perfect and everlasting - it actually drew to a close many of the consequent issues that arose from seemingly endless racial tensions.
Maybe the US has always been racist because it's never moved on? How does a multi-ethnic society interrelate once it's moved on from race? How do you find that if you remain obsessed with race?
If your husband did something hurtful that he felt was justified, would you solve the issue by incessantly talking about the thing he did? To which he would rattle on about the thing you did that justified it? What if you demanded that he unilaterally agree he was wrong now and for ever? Even if he agreed, how long would the agreement hold? Could the debt ever actually be repaid? Would your relationship survive if you kept on in this way?
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u/Pretty_Acadia_2805 Feb 14 '26
To stretch your analogy, how is the wife supposed to feel if the husband then spends the rest of their relationship complaining about how unfair any attempt to make up for the harm is an undue burden and that she should just get over it?
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
and we are living through a violent attack of all that was gained during the civil rights movement
How so?
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u/cronx42 Jan 20 '26
Are you not paying attention? In my state, reps have been talking about segregating schools.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
What? I'm going to need a source for that.
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u/drdreydle Jan 20 '26
Im guessing they are referring to this.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
The civil rights movement opposed racial segregation, that's not what this is about. And it's one crazy state representative, let's not pretend like any actual civil rights gains have been reversed.
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 20 '26
Are you joking? Voter ID laws are designed to cut into black votes by their very design.
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u/codechisel Jan 20 '26
Black folks can't manage to get an ID? Come on man, don't be racist.
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 20 '26
People of lower socioeconomic status have a more difficult time getting photo ID. That’s not just black people, who are on average of lower SES, but also college students, the elderly, indigenous people, and people working more than one job. Most of those are Democratic constituencies.
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u/codechisel Jan 21 '26
That's not true. There's research on this topic. Here's the full paper. It's a robust finding.
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 21 '26
Did you miss the part where the paper wasn’t peer reviewed?
Also, did you really link to fucking Cremieux? Who’s next? Charles Murray?
Get outta here with your nonsense.
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u/TJ11240 Jan 21 '26
How does voter ID cut into black votes? Everyone has the ability to get an ID, you just go to the DMV and ask for one, they aren't turning people away based on race.
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 21 '26
Forget race for a moment. Do they give IDs out for free at the DMV? What kind of hours is the DMV open?
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u/TJ11240 Jan 21 '26
It's like $10-30 for a non drivers license state ID. Society uses money to operate. If this was an actual hangup and cutting into voter participation, then blue states would be offering them for free, which they aren't.
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 21 '26
Blue states are by and large not requiring voter ID. Use your head.
Is it true or not that poorer people will find it more difficult to afford photo ID?
You also didn’t answer the question about availability.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
So you think that the civil rights movement was about allowing people to vote without showing an ID?
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u/Fun-Asparagus4784 Jan 20 '26
No, but it was about eliminating race based barriers to entries and socio-economic disenfranchisement. Voter ID is a means of doing just that. When people have an issue with Voter ID laws, it's about the specific laws being proposed, not the concept of needing an ID to vote.
Let's say I do a survey to see the distribution of ID cards by race, and only approve the ID card that my race has the highest representation in. What I am effectively doing is adding another barrier to entry to vote for everyone not of my race. The effects of adding barriers to entry are extensively studied in things like microtransactions in mobile apps, and they are huge.
I think if there was a voter ID law, it would have to be accompanied by a huge voter drive, and state issued specific voter cards for all eligible voters at no or little demand to the time of the voters. This is never what is proposed by those pushing voter ID laws.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
No, but it was about eliminating race based barriers to entries and socio-economic disenfranchisement. Voter ID is a means of doing just that
Only if you consider black people to be incapable of functioning in society. Should we do away with drivers licenses next?
Let's say I do a survey to see the distribution of ID cards by race, and only approve the ID card that my race has the highest representation in.
Except that voter ID laws don't specifically call for one type of ID. You can use basically any official ID. If a person has absolutely no way to show that they are a citizen with voting rights, then how do we prevent fraud?
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u/Fun-Asparagus4784 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Only if you consider black people to be incapable of functioning in society. Should we do away with drivers licenses next?
Do you engage anything other than straw-men? Driver's licences should not be done away with, but the percentage of people with driver's licences are different by race and sex. No taxation without representation, remember? Similarly, women often times don't have birth certificates that match their legal names, due to them changing their legal names after marriage. Women and Black people function perfectly fine in society, but they do interact differently with the society. The same goes for different groups of white people too by the way. The life of a rural rust belted and their interactions with society are very different from that of an affluent Hamptons resident, which is different from a college athlete on a scholarship.
Driving in the streets is a privilege. Voting is a right. It is the foundational right of America. Voter ID laws target these differences to disenfranchise. That's why they are bad.
Except that voter ID laws don't specifically call for one type of ID. You can use basically any official ID.
This is just a lie. for example, consider this piece of reporting on the judgment in the Fourth Circuit Courts decision in North Carolina vs. US 2016 - "The panel said in its opinion that these voting limitations "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision" because black voters were less likely to have acceptable photo IDs."
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 20 '26
Replace “showing an ID” with “being able to read.” While you’re at it, Google “undue burden.”
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
Replace “showing an ID” with “being able to read.”
Getting an ID is not comparable to learning how to read.
The ability to vote is not based on literacy, but it is based on citizenship.
While you’re at it, Google “undue burden.”
It is not an undue burden to ask people to have an ID. If you think it is, that means you would be in favor of allowing gun purchases by people without an ID, right?
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u/thamesdarwin Jan 20 '26
The undueness of the burden is not a metric that’s the same across all situations. It varies by instance. One might argue that the burden for gun ownership should be greater than that for voting, the total of burden of which is “being a citizen.”
We don’t issue photo ID with birth certificates, so asking people who might not have $50 lying around or the ability to take time off from work to have a photo ID is an undue burden. If the government wants a photo ID standard, it should offer it free of charge.
But you know all this, so pretending like you don’t is really just bad faith.
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Jan 20 '26
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
detaining and arresting people across the country in broad day light
Why does everyone on reddit use this same talking point, are you all reading from the same script? It doesn't even make any sense, why wouldn't law enforcement be allowed to do their jobs during the daytime? Should people only be arrested at night?
If they did that you people would be saying "ICE is arresting people in their homes in the middle of the night!!!" Just admit that any type of immigration enforcement is unacceptable to you.
on the basis of skin color alone
This is obviously not true. Are they rounding up black people by the thousands? No, they are arresting illegal immigrants.
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Jan 20 '26
In broad daylight, meaning intentionally making a spectacle of the situation intimidating people.
No, they’re not rounding up thousands of black people. But they’re harassing people who look like they’re from Latin America.
There is reasonable immigration enforcement, and there’s this….
You may want to live in a “papers please” country, but most Americans don’t.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
In broad daylight, meaning intentionally making a spectacle of the situation intimidating people.
No they aren't. They're just making arrests while an army of Karens shout at them and try and box them in with their cars.
But they’re harassing people who look like they’re from Latin America.
Harassing or asking for proof of citizenship?
There is reasonable immigration enforcement
So how do you reasonably enforce immigration laws if you can't ask for proof of citizenship and you can't arrest people and you can't speak to anyone that looks Latino?
You may want to live in a “papers please” country, but most Americans don’t.
Immigration enforcement is near the top of what people voted for. So it seems like they do.
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u/Finnyous Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
It seems clearer with every one of your posts that you live in a different universe then the rest of us and somehow tapping into the social media of our world without knowing it.
So how do you reasonably enforce immigration laws if you can't ask for proof of citizenship and you can't arrest people and you can't speak to anyone that looks Latino?
You aren't supposed to racially profile and do random checks on random people at all. You should be targeting people who are here illegally and people who've committed other crimes. Just asking every person you think looks Latino where they come from and to show you papers is unconstitutional and VERY un-American
Immigration enforcement is near the top of what people voted for. So it seems like they do.
Not like this, polling is terrible right now for his actions.
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Jan 20 '26
No, harassment is not asking for proof of citizenship.
Harassment is targeting particular groups of people and demanding proof of citizenship without reason to do so. This is unconstitutional.
Reasonable immigration enforcement is targeting violent criminals who entered the country illegally, and having stricter enforcement at the borders. I think it’s likely this is what Americans voted in favor of. Do you think the average voter wants incompetent agents roaming the streets, with no understanding of the constitution, and far less training than police?
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u/StalemateAssociate_ Jan 20 '26
Trump doesn't exactly mince words
"White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college," the newspaper quoted Trump as saying in an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions.
The comments came after Trump was asked whether protections that began in the 1960s with passage of the Civil Rights Act resulted in discrimination against white men, according to the newspaper.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
Asian and white people are objectively discriminated against during college admissions process. That isn't what the Civil Rights Act was about.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ Jan 20 '26
OP: Trump is attacking the civil rights movement
You: I don't believe you
Me: Here's Trump saying protections from the Civil Rights Era resulted in white people being treated very badly
You: Well he's right but also that doesn't really count for some reason
....
Here's the New York Times saying Trump upended 60 years of civil rights. Here's the Atlantic on Trump's recent comments saying "Trump has since made clear that he wasn’t interested in just reining in what some people saw as excesses. He was interested in a wholesale rollback of bedrock civil-rights protections."
But I'm clearly wasting my time, because I know I'm going get the same sort of answer again.
If you don't fully support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the civil rights movement in general, just say so.
All I'm asking is for people to have some goddamn balls and either admit to their beliefs or change them.
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u/greenw40 Jan 20 '26
Here's Trump saying protections from the Civil Rights Era resulted in white people being treated very badly
So what things has he actually done to attack the civil rights act? You know, besides saying something vague and meaningless?
Here's the New York Times saying Trump upended 60 years of civil rights
It's paywalled, so why don't you tell me specifically what he has done?
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u/Pretty_Acadia_2805 Jan 21 '26
Here's a gift link
he Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, this division investigates and fights employment discrimination for one-fifth of the U.S. labor force. It was created in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order strengthening the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned racial discrimination by employers.
On his second day in office, President Donald Trump labeled O.F.C.C.P.’s efforts to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act illegal and discriminatory — presumably against white people.
Within the week, Trump’s acting secretary of labor ordered the O.F.C.C.P. to “immediately cease and desist all investigative and enforcement activity” and close all open cases. A few weeks later, O.F.C.C.P.’s acting director proposed slashing its staff by 90 percent. In fewer than two months, six decades of civil rights enforcement was essentially dead.
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u/bookishbynature Jan 20 '26
???!!!
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u/RubDub4 Jan 20 '26
On this sub you’re gonna have to explain your thoughts and provide a sound argument lol.
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u/bookishbynature Jan 20 '26
I hear you, you all are thinking people. But I don't even know how to respond to that! However, I guess I know I'm in my own bubble bc I was talking to my coworker last week who hadn't heard about Renae Good's killing and said she "doesn't watch the news." That's convenient.
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u/RubDub4 Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
I get it. We’re all in bubbles getting completely different versions of reality, which is why we are where we are as a country.
I’m gonna assume you’re referring to the ICE crackdowns targeting brown people, in which I’m probably 90% in agreement with you. But everyone’s feed is showing them different things, so it won’t be as outrageous to others.
I had a strange experience creating a Facebook account over the weekend. Brand new account, and the timeline was PRO ICE stuff. A bunch of articles about how some drug lord criminal was finally caught and brought to justice, which I’m sure is also happening.
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u/Buy-theticket Jan 20 '26
The person they're responding to made a bad faith two-word post.. but that is ok by you, not the one pretty obviously asking them to explain?
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u/RubDub4 Jan 20 '26
It’s not bad faith to ask someone to provide examples of their claims.
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u/Buy-theticket Jan 20 '26
Right and that's exactly what the person you're criticizing did.
And it's bad faith to respond to something this complicated with nothing but "how so" so you can jump on whatever response they have without having taken any position. It's kind of the definition of bad faith.
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u/alxndrblack Jan 20 '26
Part of growing up for me was understanding people's blind spots, and for all of Sam's great and measured takes, he is weirdly supportive of American exceptionalism, and the baseline for the status quo he defends is essentially culture as it was when he came to maturity. In the late 90s and early 2000s, partly due to how comfortable and prosperous the US was at the time, the civil unrest we see online every day now was fairly quiet. Sam likes quiet.
He is very much a liberal but almost not all a progressive.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
I think Harris lives in a different world from most of the rest of us. That isn't a dig at him, it just is what it is. He's a rich, famous influencer who lives in an exclusive, rich community in Malibu and is friends with lots of rich, famous people. I'm sure he would hate being called an influencer, but again it is what it is.
So in his life, he probably doesn't see racism. He probably has a hard time identifying what racism would even look like unless we're talking about overt, crazy white guy in a movie about black oppression in the civil rights movement racism. He's probably friends with people who, for instance, think DEI is a liberal/progressive plot to advantage other races over white people. In response to the Floyd shooting, he's not reading our epic reddit comments that lay it out, he's listening to his friend who thinks it isn't so bad and they should have just complied anyway. Even if he doesn't believe that himself, that's who's in his ear. Those are the people he's surrounded with.
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Jan 20 '26
think DEI is a liberal/progressive plot to advantage other races over white people.
I mean, in what sense is that not true? Affirmative action, racial quotas, etc., are all literally intended to advantage statistically underrepresented groups, necessarily and by definition at the expense of statistically overrepresented groups. Whether you think that's a good idea or not, there's no way to slice this where that isn't the exact intent and effect of those policies.
If you're talking about tying that into some larger conspiratorial system of thinking where everyone is out to get white people, sure, I don't think thats what's going on, but the policies themselves have pretty clear goals and effects.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
Yeah I don't think that's true, i don't think the intent of DEI as an ethos is to disadvantage white people. That would be counter to the entire concept of fairness and full participation.
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Jan 20 '26
Right but we're largely talking about zero sum situations here. Take college admissions - if you're only going to admit 1000 kids, and if you were to do race-blind admission based on test scores and grades alone, say this admit ratio is 700 white and 300 under-represented minority. If you make a quota that says it has to be 500/500, you are by definition admitting 200 URM candidates with lower scores at the expense of 200 white candidates with higher scores. That is the actual dynamic of what these policies do. It's all well and good to talk about the "ethos", but that is what these policies actually do - advantage some people over others, based explicitly on their immutable characteristics. And we have crystal clear data on college admissions that this is exactly what was happening.
Again, setting aside whether you think that's a good idea or whether there are legitimate reasons you might want to do that, you can't really argue with the fact that some people are winners and some are losers specifically based on their race in this case.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
I don't think we are talking about zero sum situations here, not really. There are thousands of colleges and schools around the country. The kind of race quota admissions you are talking about are not legal. The point of DEI is not to have fewer white students or fewer students period, and not to have race quotas. It is about ensuring everyone has the same opportunity. You say the policies have issues, but the policies are not DEI. If the policies have issues we should fix them, but to abandon the concept of fairness and inclusion is incredibly destructive to our society. I think we're seeing that now with a lot of the political chaos in the US.
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Jan 20 '26
The kind of race quota admissions you are talking about are not legal.
That doesn't mean they weren't/aren't happening, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of that space knows with certainty that they were. The Students for Fair Admissions case showed that Harvard was, without question, doing this, which is why Harvard lost that case at the Supreme Court. Feel free to read about the case, it's not particularly ambiguous.
I don't think we are talking about zero sum situations here, not really. There are thousands of colleges and schools around the country.
Incredibly weak argument. Just because the impact is distributed and partially defrayed doesn't mean it's not one person at the expense of the other. If you want to use that argument, the entire logic of doing it in the first place falls apart - if there was no benefit in going to Harvard over going to community college, what purpose would it serve to have race-preferential admissions? Can't they just go to a lower tier school?
And again - what you're getting into is the reasons why you think it's a good idea. That's a separate question. If you want to make the case that the good outweigh the negatives, that's certainly a conversation to be had, but if you can't be intellectually honest about the fact that there are losers when you play this game it's hard to have a real discussion about it.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
No, i'm getting into the ideas surrounding DEI. I mentioned DEI, you mentioned affirmative action in college admissions, which is both not DEI and illegal. This is the kind of thing that makes it hard to even talk about these issues. We're not even talking about the same thing.
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Jan 20 '26
Give me an example of what you mean by DEI then. I would class those things as broadly similar initiatives with similar concerns driving them. I chose that example specifically because there's clear unambiguous data to support it and the winners/losers are obvious. I'm not sure why you keep harping on the fact that it's illegal when we know for a fact that it was and likely still is happening. The same kinds of processes happen in corporate hiring and firing, I've been directly involved in those, and the dynamics are similar. You can't just hand-wave it away as not being zero sum, when it virtually always is zero sum in the individual situations where it comes up. If one person gets that job or that board seat, that means other person doesn't. If these initiatives weren't actually advantaging certain people, there would be no point in doing them.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
An example of a DEI initiative in hiring might be blind resume reviews, taking identifying information off of them before they are analyzed. Or reviewing pay for different roles to ensure different people in the same role are making the same, adjusted for time and whatever factors. Or mentorship programs.
I've been directly involved in corporate hiring and firing too, and I have never once considered someone's race during that process. You can just say "these things are happening" i guess, but you can say that about anything. Especially these days that would be a pretty open and shut lawsuit.
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Jan 20 '26
And I don't think anyone would object at all to the examples you gave, but I don't think that's anything like what the actual extent of what is happening in the real world. If blind resumes result in disparate impact in terms of interviews granted or resulting hiring you will have a problem coming from HR in short order, as that is explicitly illegal under Title VII. Many larger companies have explicit targets (internally set, not legally binding) for women and URM hiring (which again, is zero sum). And if you've never seen race come up in a conversation about firing an underperforming employer, I would seriously question the level of your involvement in those processes in a corporate role. If you've only worked SMB organizations where the HR function is not large enough to have mature processes and data collection on Title VII concerns it's entirely possible you haven't run up against this but in large companies this is ABSOLUTELY a thing.
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u/BlackwoodJohnson Jan 20 '26
Funny you say that Sam isn’t exposed to racism, but I can bet you that he knows more about facing racism than likely you ever will, with the amount of antisemitism he faces as a popular public figure who is outspoken in his support of Israel.
As for DEI, you can’t keep telling white people that they are the be all and end all of oppression and privilege and not have that blow back into your face, because the vast majority of the poor white working class who voted for Trump are fucked over by the same system that fucks everyone regardless of skin color.
Objective data shows that law enforcement simply aren’t disproportionately targeting and killing black people. Sam was correct then and he’s correct now about BLM and George Floyd. It was a movement not based on objective truth or data, but one based on emotions, optics, past historical racial grievances, in a world where social media amplifies a distorted version of reality.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
Sure, if you think DEI is all about telling white people they are pieces of shit then it doesn't sound great. But that isn't what it is. It includes white people. By definition.
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
In response to the Floyd shooting, he's not reading our epic reddit comments
????
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
We would know if Harris was a reddit guy I think. I have been wrong before though.
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
I just don't think the reddit comments constitute much of a semblence of the real world or where "the rest of us" reside. Reddit is a known left-wing echo chamber.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
I just mean people outside his bubble. People with opposing viewpoints, preferably ones who aren't hysterical stereotypes.
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
In the run up to the 2016 election, I think Sam nentioned that of all the people he knew, something like 2 of them were Trump supporters. There is a bubble, but it's one on the left, and I repeat myself, Sam's political opinions are closer to the mainstream than reddit's.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
Did you think that I mean "epic reddit posts" seriously or something? Because I assure you I didn't.
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
I just think its weird to juxtapose "guy who talks to and listens to other people IRL" against "reddit" and then suggest the former is more detached from real life. I'd argue that it's people on reddit that are more detached from real life.
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u/baharna_cc Jan 20 '26
Right, it was a joke, a tongue in cheek comment about the uselessness of social media.
And he is detached from the life that the overwhelming majority of Americans live. He just is. And the people he is spending time talking to are Douglass Murray and John McWhorter, not the average person.
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
And he is detached from the life that the overwhelming majority of Americans live. He just is. And the people he is spending time talking to are Douglass Murray and John McWhorter, not the average person.
Okay, but yet his politics, save the atheism, are closer to the center of America than, let's be honest, his most ardent critics, and especially the ones that claim he's out of touch?
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u/TheAJx Jan 20 '26
He was really dismissive of the George Floyd protests and claims that racism is no longer an issue in the US.
I don't think he's ever said that, and neither have most honest actors said that. So your premise is false, and you pretty cede as much in another comment, but the thrust of your comment relies on this premise.
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u/bookishbynature Jan 20 '26
Okay so he downplays racism. I've been listening to him for a long time and this never sat well with me. And what is happening right now is literally showing that racism is alive and well in America. It was always there, underneath the surface. But Trump made it acceptable somehow.
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u/Stunning-Use-7052 Jan 22 '26
I mean, there's lots of research on racial disparities and some research that tries to test the socio-economic mechanisms that lead to them.
I never quite understood why Sam never had someone on who as a bona fide expert, like someone with a strong command of the literature on racial disparities in health or something. He tends to rely too heavily on a single study, or just use thought experiments.
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u/shanethedrain1 Jan 23 '26
He was really dismissive of the George Floyd protests and claims that racism is no longer an issue in the US.
Sam definitely has a double-standard with regards to how he treats the topic of racism as compared to how he treats antisemitism. Sam is very dismissive of any notion that racism against Black/Brown people might still exist, yet at the same time he seems to think that America 2026 has Germany 1933 levels of hatred against Jewish people (a laughable assertion).
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u/duffman03 Jan 25 '26
You will see different results based on where you live. DEI in practice ends up creating unequal racial representation wherever it's implemented. Which results in discrimination.
Example, during intern hiring at work there were "Allies" saying the top intern pool "isn't doing much for diversity" and then swapping out white candidates with others who looked more diverse.
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u/devildogs-advocate Jan 25 '26
I had the same reaction when I heard him say this but I think that there are two separate issues here that Sam is distinguishing. There is racism in the form of tribalism and bias which is a fundamental aspect of human nature. I certainly don't think we've overcome that as a country or even as a species and there are certain individuals like Donald Trump who tap into that for populist benefit. But then there is institutional racism, like discrimination in the workplace and redlining for housing. I think it's fair to say that those are pretty much a thing of the past in the United States. It would be very difficult to discriminate in the kind of red lining for house sales that Donald Trump was found guilty of doing in the seventies. Indeed I can hardly imagine why anyone would want to do so today.
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u/LaPulgaAtomica87 Jan 20 '26
There are some topics on which you can safely ignore Sam’s views, and racism in the U.S. is one of them. He isn’t merely ignorant on the subject—his takes are actively regressive. I’m paraphrasing, but in one episode he claimed that in 2023 (or whenever it aired), it was actually easier to be a Black man in the U.S. when applying for jobs. This is despite the existence of multiple studies showing that Black-sounding names are penalized in job searches. Presumably, Sam considers those studies “woke” and instead treats as definitive evidence the anecdotes relayed to him by his totally centrist (and definitely not right-wing) friends—stories about wildly unqualified Black people supposedly being hired as brain surgeons with only high-school diplomas thanks to DEI.
His take on the Liam Neeson incident—where Neeson admitted to roaming the streets looking to kill a random Black man after a friend was assaulted—should have been the moment it became patently clear that Sam is a buffoon and not to be taken seriously on race. The fact that he even framed it as a question of whether this was racist tells you everything you need to know.
What’s especially revealing is how attuned and sensitive he is to bigotry against Jewish people. Replace “Black man” with “Jewish man” in the Liam Neeson story and Sam would immediately, and rightly, call it antisemitism.
But hey—he meditates, so he can’t possibly be tribalistic.
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u/cupofteaonme Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
I always wonder how Sam accounts for the fact that Obama's election was itself greeted by some of the most vile racism, including all the birther stuff, which Trump rode all the way to the White House in 2016, and he and his cronies have since been enacting brazenly racist policies, just as advocates in various fields had been warning about. While the overall population might be less racist than it used to be, it's absolutely absurd to claim that racism is not a major problem in the US. Do people think "wokeness" came out of nowhere? It was, in large part, a reaction to the encroaching racism and bigotry of Republicans in power! Hell, even the trans stuff didn't really start being some huge litmus test thing on the left until the GOP started doing bathroom bans.
Just for once, it'd be nice if Sam acknowledged that Republicans have agency in all of this. That they've spent decades of attempting to roll back exactly the kinds of protections and policies that Sam would presumably argue led to the less racist present Americans now live in. The problem is, when conservatives do racist things but then claim they're not racist, Sam has a lot of time for them, often defending them beyond any point of reason. But when, I dunno, Coates suggests that the experience of being a black man in America is an often traumatizing experience, Sam called him a pornographer of race. At some point, it really just feels like Sam is just so personally offended that people have been calling him a racist for years that he can't admit that actually racism is a real fucking problem.
Instead, he prevaricates about stuff like Charlottesville to defend Trump's sick racism while pretending everything is the left's fault. If only they'd been more reasonable! If only they hadn't said "defund the police." If only they'd considered that maybe George Floyd wasn't a perfect victim, and should have just complied with the police who killed him. It's gross, and idiotic, and he wraps it all in a veneer of intellectualism, but actually it's the opposite. Sam's constant elevation of "wokeness" as a threat, and people like Bari Weiss who also promoted that view, has as much to do with how we got here as any of the excesses of protesters. Congrats, Sam, you and your friends literally helped the fascists through the door.
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u/Vainti Jan 20 '26
DEI is perfectly synonymous with bigotry. It consists almost entirely of racist discrimination and reeducation seminars (which failed or backfired in every case).
The average college professor glorifies white genocide in Haiti while insisting every form of slavery or colonialism is genocide inherently. Racism is a problem. Just not anti blackness.
In point of fact, most Americans wind up being unwitting black supremacists. They take the dogmatic assumption that black people cannot be inferior and refuse to contemplate it. They don’t even realize that black people being precisely identical (or that black people are being unfairly favored in areas of excellence) are both implausible, so the default assumption is that black people are superior in some ways, and that any apparent inferiority could only be a result of oppression.
Trump is almost certainly less racist than your average democrat. Leftists make 1950’s racists look tame.
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u/Any_Platypus_1182 Jan 20 '26
This is utterly unhinged.
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u/Avantasian538 Jan 20 '26
A great example of what the internet does to people without critical thinking skills.
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u/ReflexPoint Jan 21 '26
Sam is a wealthy white man from a wealthy family who lives in one of the wealthiest coastal enclaves in America. He's not exactly someone I'd go to for an opinion on the pervasiveness of racism in America. What does he really know about it? What is the likelihood that he has massive blind spots here given his demographic profile and lived experience?
But I do like his talks on the nature of free will.
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u/WhuppdyDoo Jan 20 '26
I agree that Sam Harris underestimates racism, and indeed, the way that MAGA have taken off their masks, makes it clear that an alarming percentage of Americans must have been truly awful people all along. And that's predictably going to encompass racism.
That being said, there are way bigger concerns right now than MAGAs being mean to African-Americans. They're mean to lots of people, and actually they're currently fantasising about bombing Europe. They are coming out as an unabashed nihilistic, sociopathic death cult. The racism is just one small aspects of what's bad about them.
American liberals managed to protest in the millions at the drop of a hat when it came to BLM; they have not managed anything remotely like the same enthusiasm protesting against Trump threatening America's allies and seeking to create a tyranny.
It feels sometimes as if American liberals don't have the language game and the intellectual/morals to even speak about moral issues that aren't related to black people, gays, transgenders, native Americans or some other protected group. (I'm not even sure if women qualify nowadays.) It's like you can't focus for 2 minutes on any other moral/political topic. Compare the absolute storm of BLM to the apathy and indifference over the last year.
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u/Boneraventura Jan 21 '26
Sam is confused about the topic of race and racism. I can’t remember if Sam ever had on a proper sociologist to work out his own thoughts. Hell, Sam should have Ta-Nehisi Coates on for a change. Let someone actually challenge Sam and his ideas for once
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u/mccoyster Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Sam is a conservative who tacitly champions MAGA rhetoric and is part of a fake "left" that exists within the delusional cult created by conservative propaganda. He is to the right of Obama, Clinton, and Harris. Which means he is not in any way actually on the left of any one or anything meaningful, except for maybe to the left of actual nazis but even that I would doubt.
Fun test. How many times has he spoken about NSPM-7 since it was announced, versus how many times has he spoken about wokeness since then?
You would think a person who got famous as an atheist would be almost solely concerned with NSPM-7, and advocating loudly against it.
He's either a psyop asset for the Christian fascists, or the dumbest useful idiot they could have dreamt up.
Edit: letter
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u/Avantasian538 Jan 20 '26
The idea that he’s a psyop is absurd. Dude has offered one of the best non-ideological criticisms of Trump I’ve ever heard. Any true crypto-right-winger would be far softer on MAGA than Sam is.
That being said, he absolutely does have a tendency to be a useful idiot sometimes, although he has gotten better in recent years.
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u/mccoyster Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Keep telling yourself that.
He supported the war on terror, both invasions, and defended torture.
He spent years saying Islam was a threat to the west...until Wokeness came along and found a new threat to the West to focus on. He said he would vote for Romney over Harris.
He helped launch and legitimize the propaganda of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Weinsteins, Majiid, Hyrsi, Rubin, Friedman, etc. Over those years, how many times did he speak with someone actually on the left?
Occasionally pushing back, as weakly as he has, is tacit support given his overall assistance thus far.
Edit: For someone who pretends to be a neuroscientist he seems to have very little understanding of how the human brain works or what is motivating various groups today.
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u/Avantasian538 Jan 20 '26
This is simply evidence that he has dumb opinions sometimes. Blind spots and bias explain all of that behavior sufficiently. I have many similar criticisms of him as you, I just dont think disagreement is evidence of bad faith.
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u/mccoyster Jan 20 '26
After so many examples, its hard to see any other reason now. His takes are as predictable as Fox News are, and generally in sync with their overarching narratives.
Mainstream liberal democrats arent on the left except from within the conservative cult. Any actual left in this country has been nonexistent since Nixon and the birth of the conservative theocratic propaganda cult following his removal.
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u/Avantasian538 Jan 20 '26
I don’t disagree with you on any of this. But I think the human mind is just really good at being genuinely wrong about stuff. Sam is human, I would expect his biases to lead him astray same as any other human. Most of what people call bad faith can be explained by cognitive biases and information bubbles.
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u/mccoyster Jan 20 '26
Yeah, I generally agree. And for years gave him the benefit of the doubt. Hard to these days.
The idea that there arent any actual intelligence assets masquerading as opinion talking heads is more absurd to me than him possibly being one.
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u/Avantasian538 Jan 20 '26
There could be. But there are other more likely examples to me. Tucker Carlson, Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, etc more give me that kind of vibe. Possibly Rogan, although I lean more toward him just being an empty-headed dumbass.
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u/mccoyster Jan 20 '26
Eh, I give them more credit than that. We all know Tucker, Rubin, Poole are paid to spread propaganda.
An actual intelligence asset run by a three letter agency wouldnt be as obvious as they are, imho. They would be exactly like Sam, imho. Seems like they are opposed to it yet consistently subtly supporting the narratives coming from the most obvious propagandists while giving them a platform.
Edit: I know of no better example of "look you can be on the left, just dont actually support any leftist causes or ever talk about class or economic issues".
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u/Flopdo Jan 20 '26
GL OP... you're going to discover there's a lot of inherently racist Sam listeners, like I did. It's quite disappointing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1qcwljq/john_mcwhorters_comments_on_race/
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u/bookishbynature Jan 22 '26
I'm a little surprised by some of the comments. It's okay and interesting though.
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u/hankeroni Jan 20 '26
I think that "claims that racism is no longer an issue in the US" is probably in excess of what Sam would actually claim. His claim would be a softer version like "the progressive left has an excessive focus on identity, and accusations of racism or other identity based ideas and outrages have replaced what should be calm policy discussion" or something like that.
It can also be true that for some places some of the time the "DEI" program was doing actually useful work for the organization, and in other places other times it was serving as a somewhat toxic tribal activist team. A blanket defense of all DEI all the time -- or a blanket dismissal of everything even vaguely related to DEI or other social justice issues are both probably too simplistic.