AS277: Tommentary on the Harris-Buress Trainwreck, Kaepernick and More

It’s Tommentary time! I’ve got a few brief thoughts on the Sam Harris Hannibal Buress conversation that went off the rails a bit. After that I offer some brief thoughts on some general themes of the overwhelming number of comments I got about the Smalley episode. Then, an impassioned talk about the Kaepernick controversy. That’s right, impassioned.

12 thoughts on “AS277: Tommentary on the Harris-Buress Trainwreck, Kaepernick and More”

  1. Through the Kaepernick thing I found out that Americans sing the national anthem at every game (every game! every game!). To me that is mental! Surely you’d all be totally sick of it at some point. I can’t imagine how it doesn’t fry your brains.

    We (Europeans) tend to sing ours at games where our national teams are playing (i.e. Scotland vs whoever). Even then if a player didn’t sing along or sat no one would care.

    If I had to hear “Flower of Scotland” (which is okay but not great) or “God save the Queen” (which is just the worst) every time I wanted to watch sport I’d hold a sit down protest too.

    1. As an American, I have never understood why The Star Spangled Banner was the song chosen as the national anthem. It’s a war song. I have always hated the song. But personal preference aside, I will not perform a ritual because someone demands it. Just as i would not bow to the Queen of England or any other monarch. I will no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I am as tired of the indoctrination of “national pride” as I am of religion.

  2. hannibal was 100% in the wrong there, and being drunk is hardly an excuse.

    I’m not sure from what you said if you listened to the entirety of the episode of the josh zepps podcast, but the four of them went from analyzing/making fun of an interviewee from Josh’s time at huff post live. An young woman told him that ‘as a white male’ he couldn’t understand what she was talking about… Hannibal participated in the analysis and cracked jokes at the girls expense, and then minutes later did literally the exact same thing to sam.

    Why is it that Hannibal isn’t giving Sam, a friend of his friend joe, the benefit of the doubt that he’s not some huge racist?

    The problem with conversation they intended to discuss manifested itself in real time, as hannibal reacted to statistics with appeals to His personalfriends that have been shot, and sams whiteness excluding me him from any knowledge of this arena.

    It was pretty unbelievable to listen to… Dude made a total fool of himself and joe had to stick his neck out to save Hannibal even the tiniest bit of face.

    ‘In smarter than you. I’m as smart or smarter than you (Sam Harris)’
    Hannibal Burres, 2016

  3. hannibal was 100% in the wrong there, and being drunk is hardly an excuse.

    I’m not sure from what you said if you listened to the entirety of the episode of the josh zepps podcast, but the four of them went from analyzing/making fun of an interviewee from Josh’s time at huff post live- a young woman told him that ‘as a white male’ he couldn’t understand what she was talking about, with Hannibal participating in the analysis and cracking jokes at the girls expense- to minutes later hannibal doing literally the exact same thing to sam.

    Why is it that Hannibal isn’t giving Sam, a friend of his friend joe, the benefit of the doubt that he’s not some huge racist? This problem seems to be all over public discourse right now.

    The difficult aspect of conversation that they intended to discuss manifested itself in real time, as hannibal reacted to statistics with appeals to his personal friends that have been shot, and sams whiteness excluding him from any knowledge of this arena.

    It was pretty unbelievable to listen to… Dude made a total fool of himself and joe had to stick his neck out to save Hannibal even the tiniest bit of face.

    ‘In smarter than you. I’m as smart or smarter than you (Sam Harris)’
    Hannibal Burres, 2016

  4. I hadn’t heard about the Buress/Harris interaction before today. After listening to it, Harris definitely came off as condescending and dismissive. He can’t just say that because he’s extrapolating a narrative from limited statistical data that his conclusions and assertions are more reasonable and better-informed than people’s lived experience. Did he obtain objective data from every officer involved shooting, so as to protect against reporting bias (keeping in mind that no such data is collected by police)? Did he collect data on the events precipitating those shootings, so as to determine if there were different standards of engagement/de-escalation correlated to race? Did he incorporate measurable psychological outcomes related to police interactions, comparing and contrasting multiple racial and socio-economic areas? Did he conduct a methodologically sound meta-analysis, accounting for the potential existence of studies which could substantially affect the p value of his analysis? Or did he make inferences from estimates and samples, call that “statistics,” and then offer his determination that black people who claim they’ve been harassed by police haven’t met his burden of proof, while also touting the same concern-trolling observations and counterarguments we hear again and again (e.g., there are definitely some bad apples, there wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t “act like assholes” when dealing with police, the time to argue is when you’re sitting beside your lawyer, etc.)?

    I agree that tribalism is a concern, particularly as Thomas mentioned, when it prohibits conversation between good-faith actors who would be able to make meaningful change if only they weren’t divided by perceived allegiances. That said, I don’t know that Sam Harris making a token gesture acknowledging racial inequality would have made his overly rigid focus on “stats,” devoid of relevant factors, any more tolerable.

    1. Well, I disagree.

      “He can’t just say that because he’s extrapolating a narrative from limited statistical data that his conclusions and assertions are more reasonable and better-informed than people’s lived experience.”

      Yes, he can. A person’s lived experience is one data point. It’s an anecdote. When you’re trying to figure out how prevalent that is, what societal factors cause it, and how to stop it, any larger-view look at the statistics is better informed than that data point. Sam is talking about the large-scale phenomenon. He’s talking about populations, not individuals. Repeatedly pulling him back to talking about individuals is having a different conversation.

      Sam has never said that no one is harassed, so “disproving” him by bringing up a single example of harassment isn’t a counterpoint.

      1. I agree with you to the extent that what you’re saying is that statistical analysis is a valid method by which to make inferences about trends and patterns in a given population. Rather than a general denunciation of data analysis, the point I was trying to make (and failing, I guess?) was not that it’s useless to extrapolate and make inferences from data, but that to the best of my knowledge, Sam Harris has not conducted methodologically sound research on the litany of interconnected variables and factors necessary to draw meaningful conclusions about the relationship between black people and police.

        Yes, “the plural of anecdote is not data,” but when I mentioned black people’s lived experience, I don’t just mean the things that happened to each individual person. People’s lives are interconnected. We are all constantly forming our own identities based on interactions with others, taking in feedback, seeing what happens to people we identify with, connecting with others, processing parts of their life stories… essentially, there’s an overwhelming abundance of data. I agree wholeheartedly that any one person’s internal data analysis must, by definition, be so limited and biased and foundationally unguided as to be useless to scientists, but I disagree that the self-imposed limitations scientists put on data collection and statistical analysis gives a more whole and valid picture, on principle.

        To say that “one data point” is less useful than 100 data points is an empty assertion without further context. If I want to investigate claims of sexism in modern corporate America, there is an abundance of information that would be less useful than any number of “single, anecdotal data points” derived from interviews with working women. I could do a methodologically sound survey of all company policies on sex discrimination, I could collect raw population numbers to see if women are accurately represented as a proportion of the overall population, and I could collect everybody’s shoe sizes, because that’s good, quantifiable data. To insist that any one person’s experience is a valid representation of a larger pattern is not sound science, but to insist that you’ve seen all the shoe sizes so that person’s experience must be an outlier is worse than unsound science, it’s shit.

        To insist, as Sam Harris seemed to, that one has a better grasp of the big picture due to having compared (by which I mean did basic algebra to) other people’s statistics about population density and crime rates, and then making inferences about that information without factoring in relevant, potentially mediating/moderating variables is absurd.

        I concede that Harris never said no one is harassed. If you’ll be so kind as to allow me to amend my comment, I probably should have said something like “It’s fine for Harris to use shallow analysis of dubious statistics to draw insipid conclusions that satisfy his own curiosity, but it’s troubling for him to then demand people of color explain why his math is wrong before he’ll acknowledge that racism affects their interactions with police.”

  5. Thomas,

    Is there an email address one can use to contact you? I would like to provide commentary on the subject of the National Anthem, Kaepernick and the flag from a soldier’s perspective.

    I am currently an infantry officer in the U.S. Army and can give a perspective from a soldier’s eyes, or at least what I perceive when I speak to my soldiers. I, like you and many other that listen to your podcast, feel that it’s every American’s right to do what they will when the National Anthem plays or to do what they will with the flag. Albeit, there is something deep down that is shaken when the protest is performed, regardless of how legitimate the cause.

    I would be happy to go into more detail through email. I’m not a proponent of comment threads and would prefer to express my thoughts fully in an email. I mean no offense to those using the comment section, commenting is just not something I care to do outside of this initial comment.

  6. I like your commentaries, they make me think. And I was interested in hearingnthe “We the People” episode.

    As far as the Harris/Buress interaction, I think your term “declaring allegiance” is not quite the right term. It is more like a declaration of intent. The intent is to address and change unintentional unfairness or assumptions on one’s own part. And I think it is still very necessary. Here’s one reason why: in the convo these guys had regarding racist police, the underlying subject of racist police DEPARTMENTS and racist PROSECUTORS and racist JUSTICE SYSTEM and racist POLITICAL SYSTEM and racist SOCIETY did not get acknowledged. We, as a society are just starting to notice that police commit murder. We are not focused on or acknowledging how bystander cops, the justice system, politicians, and society is OK with letting off these murdering police officers. The social contract has been broken, but the murdering cops are only the visible broken edge. Rebuilding the social contract is what it will take to change the problem. We still have many blind spots that make us unintentional racists.

    When we discuss cancer, we are all pretty confident that no one enjoys having cancer flourish. And we know that Cancer (unlike racism) doesn’t comfort one segment of society by only targeting a less valued group. Racism is systemic, patterned action. It is not random mutation.

    You can’t address a problem until you grok it. We have to address the problem of racism with an awareness of the history, and it’s deep imbeddedness in our culture. That is what this “declaration of intent” is about, IMO. It is a dedication to put the issue in its historical context. To recognize the deep pattern of inhumaneness and pain underlying it. It is a committment to saying: “I might have a blind spot where I am unknowingly contributing, and I want to fix that.” Pulling one bit of string does not untangle the gordian knot… we have to work to untangle the whole mess. I think stating this intention at the outset of any working conversation, and reiterating it as needed is reasonable to ask of people who want to solve the problem. It shows that they are committed. Really, if they won’t even say what their intent is (freely and without acting like stating it is unreasonable) why should the people talking to them trust that they will be willing to deal with any deeper discomfort?

  7. Maybe I am way off base here but, I think everyone has missed the point Sam has tried to make over and over. The point being that we can’t even have the conversation. I don’t hear Sam making very many assertions. I think he would like to examine the topic of racism and police violence with a bit of objectivity and to be able to delve into every nuanced point without being thrashed about the head every time the interlocutor hears something that may be incorrect or implying something that may invalidate their experiences. Is it really solving the problem to constantly have the discussion derailed because someone brings up a statistic? I personally find it frustrating. How many times do we have to begin the conversation with a preamble about systemic racism and the linked police violence? I find myself wanting to say “Yes, yes! Can we move on now?” I may not completely agree with Sam or Glenn Loury but I got so much more out of the conversation because they actually were able to have one.

  8. Bad form to comment on a conversation without hearing it first. I listened to that Zepps podcast and I didn’t think it was a trainwreck. I think Harris has overreacted since then and made it out worse than it was. They disagreed, big deal. Harris too often makes it out to be so horrible when someone won’t agree with him. I know he likes to say his issue is about the other party not understanding his position, but I think he sometimes confuses the two. I thought it was very presumptuous of him in the podcast where he insisted that Burress couldn’t state Harris’s position, but that he could state Burress’s, I also take issue with how he stated approvingly of a kind of profiling strategy by police that since more blacks commit crimes, they are right to be on the lookout or weary of blacks more, when the context was about Burress’s experience growing up in a black neighborhood. “Be on the lookout for black man” in a black neighborhood is not very specific nor useful.

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