Beauty and threatens lives. I was right candace and the editor of city journal. It is my honor to introduce the books author heather mcdonald. [applause] heather is the Manhattan InstituteThomas Debbie smith fellow. She is a contributing editor of city journal whos written for the magazine almost since its inception in her byline appears rightly in the wall street journal and many other leading publications. She is also the author of the t bestsellers were on cops and the diversity delusion. Just for kicks i asked the chap gpt who most influential city writers are in heathers name headed the list. I like that. I like ai. Over the years heathers scrupulous groundbreaking work has shed light on important trends in American Life new book brings back relentless reporting to perhaps the most dangerous one yet which is the equity craze that threatening our scientific, cultural and public institutionsum. She details the rise of impact ideology and potential to doet enormous harm to our society. The book also represents a powerful defense for our inheritance. Will discuss all that and more tonight. In the wake of George Floyd Death in may 2020 activistsra heighten their cries for socalled Racial Equity and a proportional representation of race in institutions andza organizationsre. The press published countless stories about minorities underrepresentation in various fields andnd corporations begano fall over themselves proclaiming their guilt and perpetual racial and inhi equity. Driving the shift was the concept of disparate impact which is really at the center of your book. What is the core idea of desperate impact and can you trace briefly its origin and how it has metastasized in this period . Thank you brian. I hate to use the phrase but a turn or. Im going to discuss things very uncomfortable to talk about. I am talking about group averages and avid skills, average behavioral. Im not making any judgments about any individual within any particular racial group. There are thousands of individuals on this racial Group Without racial group that outperform everyone else. We cannot make any assumptions about individuals based on their membership in groups. But, the discourse that is tearing down our civilization that is tearing down standards is it self in grotesque generalities and it has to be answered with certain observations about group performance. So just please steel yourself for some truths that are taboo across her population. Any standard in terms of Academic Skills that had a negative impact in certain minority groups. Above all on blanks is by definition racist. Very High Standard of business necessity. For several decades open challenge after challenge to at least entrance exams or firefighter exams. They fail at higher rates than whites the assumption always is the exam is racist the standard is racist. Throughout the test and lower standards until we get a standard that will not have a negative impact. What is never allowed to be looked at and examined as what are the underlying average rates of Academic Skills . The standard is not itself racist. But now we are going around declaring any standards that has that impactac on blacks for sait racist and we are throwing them out. This began initially in the context of employment h hiring. It was a way of expanding the civil rights laws beyond the requirement you need to intentionally discriminate. In employer need to intentionally say i do not want to hire qualified blacks. That is per se illegal. It was hard and hard to find employers who were intentionally discriminate against competitive qualified minorities. You be completely colorblind as employer few years employment that disqualifies blacks disproportionately gotta get rid of it. And now that idea has left way beyond the judicial opinions the codes is simply the lens through which we judge our mainstream institutions. X this ideology carping the sciences. This is the opening session of the book is very alarming. During the gram grants and scholarship to scientific appointments. Even help medicines being practiced. This no longer the leading criteria many of these situations. Theat deemphasis and merit in science. Our support both lives at risk with the insistence of pushing people head into medicine who are not competitively qualified or paying Scientific Research at risk here is an example of how the analysisll works. Id seen as applying to the medical schools take the Medical College admission test. Those havent impact on black students. Black scores are the rock bottom. The various medical schools nor deciding that her black students that waive completely as a developing trend. Projected there are two separate standards for admission. Blacks are made with mcat scores to be automatically disqualifying or presented by a white or asian student. Lexi miceli below average mcat gpa has a nine times greater chance of a medical school and a whitee student or asian student these are scores of the disqualifying otherwise. The medical School Licensing exam is got a pass rather than being graded. Is again the licensing exam is an impact on black medical students is due to screen students with some of the most competitive residencies during medical schools. The schools have decided rather get rid of grades and the actual medical licensing body would rather get rid of grades and destroy our ability to rank student and then get a completely color bright neutral test has no racial bias it is subjected his computer graded that has a impact on black preferences never end the pressure is enormous on schools to promote to hire doctors based on race. To promote doctors based on race to put them in charge of medical research. Pressures coming from National Funding agencies the National Institutes of health, National Science foundation are now making embrace a a more important qualification for alreceiving medical grants that actual scientific qualification. If you want to get a grant for your Alzheimers Research lab og your neurology a greater Neurology Lab you have to show how your work affects and improves diversity and how your own lab is working to change the demographics of its research court. Quickly i do not care who discovers the neurological pathways that are responsible for alzheimers. At that lab is all chinese, if it is allfemale, if it is all black, if it is all white. I do notng care. The most qualified scientists. Uniquely in the United States we made the decision that diversity is more important thanac meritocracy. Meanwhile china does not Pay Attention to identity politics. His racing. Ahead trying to throw everything its got its most talented mathematically inclined and scientifically inclined students without saying we have to pull down their capacity to make sure all groups and up at the same rate at the end of the line. X that is science. The next major part off the book is on something close to your heart which is culture. You just grab the distortion by activists who see it now primarily as camouflage for eight regime of Racial Discrimination and domination. I think what is most striking and reading your book, this part of the book is the complicity of leading artistic institutions in this ongoing attack on our western cultural inheritance. This to you would say has been accelerated george floyd killing. Maybe you could document a little bit what could happen in thee book . It is stunning to me. If you are running an upper company or an orchestra the head of the head of the Art Institute of chicago we should be on your knees in gratitude every day at your privileged existence to curate artistic tradition that are among the most sublime in world history. It escapes the petty narrow pathetically ignorant self. And expand into forms of consciousness nurse so much greater than any of us could ever hope to experience. Whether it is one of the great tragic trilogies that send chills down your spine. Perception of vengeance and the transcendence of reaching a rule of law and hoping for justice. Whether its renaissance poetry, the languor and arrows of late bronze piano music. Chopin nocturnes. Or they tragic catharsis that we get from the state metrics passion. These are works that none of us equally deserve. The music organizations, the literature departments, the art museums really do not deserve them. They are going around telling the public and what is most criminal is telling young people on theet pathetic grounds that they came out europe. Which is by definition inevitably by caucasian people. That is the tradition get over it is the past we cannot change it. Europe was not 13 black. Probably still is t not. To expect the canon of classical composers should beat 13 black and if it is not it is for saint racist is preposterous. There are fantastic black composers but they arose much later in our tradition. One of the leading classical critics in the country running for the new yorker apologizing for himself being white and curating a tradition as hes pus it blindingly white. He apologizes for white audiences pretty apologizes for white donors the other most important Classical Music critic in the country Anthony Thomas and the New York Times as called for making our kestrel auditions color conscious. Stilt musicians can be hired on the basis of race. Lee they often suffer several levels behind a screen of the audition or do not know the identity of the performers. And as with all things and are impact obsessed world today we have now decided mechanisms that are inherentlyrb colorblind and racist. It applies to red light cameras. A red light camera does not know who is driving the car. But if red light cameras show us that in certain neighborhoods black running red lights or speaking at higher rates the camera is racist i will be thrown out for that is going on across the country. You have museums directing wall labels teach their viewers to see the great masterpieces of the dutch golden age. Took about lemons and silver that is shining in the light. To see those still lifes as colonialists. Because at the same time as they were being painted pollen and the netherlands had colonial territory. You have this massive that is being promulgated is only obligation infe life. His to share this beauty. And to tell young people come to the museum. Listen to this music. I futile at that hearing these works will have lived a poor life that you could otherwise have left. Everything now is being filtered with a c completely specious lis of racial inequity. He began to talk about the question of law and order. Gets into Public Policy question for you describe and you have described in written about this in the past disconnect a resident of minority neighborhoods have had in the past said they want and lawenforcement. Rhetoric of legislator and activist. If you count blacks and other minorities have a passed. The proactive policing. Making stringent members and their communities. That would be what was discussed. One that disconnect continues to hold in the post george floyd area. T more broadly what that would have on Public Safety picnics Impact Analysis on Public Safety has been disastrous. Na absolutely disastrous. The narrative is that colorblind constitutional Law Enforcement that has an impact on black criminals is per se racist. You have the redoubled falsehood that black parents arere right o fear their children will be e killed by a cop or a white person everything they step outside. Joe biden ran on this during the president ial campaign. He said the day before he was inaugurated preset in his inaugural speech he says it constantly. It is a constant theme that is a falsehood. Blacks have a practically higher rate of death by gun b homicide. Blacks between the ages of 10 and 24 dive gun homicide 25 times the rate of whites between the age of 10 and 24. That is civil Rights Problem you would think that civil rights activists would care about. They will not talk about it because if they were to talk about it honestly and look at the actual data. What we know from the victims of witnesses to shootings of nonfatal students in the witnesses to failed shootings is that black death by gun homicidl rate is caused almost exclusively by black criminals. You could take out all Police Shootings of black men today but you could take out white shootings of black today would have virtually no effect on the facts by gun homicide rate. And yet we are blaming the cops figured limit criminal Law Enforcement. Everything you see you may have been puzzling over at the post george floydyd era, why these prosecutors not rustic commuting to trespass turnstile jumping, resisting arrest which is the most appalling thing not to proxy is basically saying to cops open season on you guys and as prosecutors we do not care. Are they not prosecuting gun possession and prostitution, disorderly conduct, loitering . It is all driven by desperate impact. So it would know to understand the world today at the chicago and albert braggs in new york, george in the worst prosecutor in the whole country has decided too but entire categories of crime offlimits to his District Attorney is because they havent impact not because enforcement is racist because the black crime rate and some attire. I haveo spent a lot of time in high crime neighborhoods talking to the residence they are pretty go to Police Community meetings and i talked to the good lawabiding people who deserve the same freedom from fear is resident of park avenue. We want more police. I smoked marijuana and my probably why cant you do something about it . There smoking weed at the club i see outside t the window but why cant you arrest those people . Why are you allowed kids to hang out by the hundreds on the corner fighting . What happened to truancy laws . People in proactive enforcement that are living with the affected d policing in the desperate impacts crusade. They never get hurt. Its a very bizarre thing. Your civil rights activists and going to do a experiment. Imagine before we have the actual reality you can imagine civil rights activist taken the side of black victims rather than black criminals. One might have even expected that. Because of black victims whose lives are beingr destroyed. All of your civil rights activists have taken the side of black criminals. They would rather not put more criminals in prison there preying on elderly black ladies who are terrified to go into the building lobby to pick up their mail when kids are there trespassing smoking weed and selling drugs. They would rather allow those good lawabiding people took to figure things out for themselves. Then make arrest and increase any Racial Disparities that we have in prison. That is a very perverse decision. Looks at this point who care about black lives are the police and white conservatives prebuilt people are talking about crime before the 2022 election work in second conservative news outlets. During racist dog whistles. If i conservative stop pain crime no one would Pay Attention. In the black victims ever care about those killed by a cop and thats a veryy small 2021 is an arm black killed by Police Officers fatally shot by Police Officers pretty i Police Officers 400 times more likely to be killed by a black mail black to beos killed by police officer. Those are the data not allowed in the public discourse. Parks racial preferences in hiring academic admissions of the theme of your book clearly diminish opportunities to boost the prospects into black and some extent hispanic applicants are often disadvantaged whites and asians have higher scores are often better credentials who are vying for the same positions. Desperate impact of parents dismiss this racial rebalancing act as necessary to advance the life chances of underprivileged minorities. But you would have to say this is wildly unfelt to the newly disadvantaged and a sure way to perpetuate it increase racialen tensions. Probably one question what is a reaction going to be the perpetuation of the policy have an impact on the intended beneficiary present a positive . Getting radicalized on t this. The standardsg for getting in Selective School gets higher and higher the numbers are allowed be set aside spots the schools the sats are racist. But not band sats completely there calculating asian you have to be and is no longer you probably should add the bassoon. You should also are going be really good at baseball. At the High School Level with her exam schools they are trying to create environments for people most academically motivated schools in new york city that have a colorblind subjective computer grid exam to get in. I think its 70 asian. Theres decades of pressure to say get rid of the exam start admitting bite rays printhead has not yet. There has been tweaking. Others have gotten rid of their exams local high school in San Francisco was also predominantly asian we went to a lottery system instead of the exam. Not surprisingly the first year after the lottery was instituted ds and fs 103 to percent. Virginia has gotten rid of its neutral colorblind completely objective admissions test went to engineer proportionality. Thee argument has been a favorie one for conservatives for years. This is reverse discrimination press not fair to people who have done nothing. Nations are not responsible for slavery. Frankly none of us today are either unless you do believe in the inheritance of acquired characte