Be Quiet and Listen

Dorothy A. Brown, professor of law at Emory University, joins Scott to contextualize what’s happening with the protests and poses some solutions for leaders in the corporate world. Scott also shares some observations about why we’re seeing a record number of new online brokerage accounts, the stock market, and creating an open dialogue around enduring change. This week’s Office Hours cover mergers & acquisitions, investing in monopolies, and why growth is a tremendous Yoda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 13, we devote this episode to LEGO, the Danish firm has committed $4 million to fighting racial injustice. I slipped and fell on six LEGO horses. And unfortunately, they went up my ass. I had to go to the emergency room and said, "Bad news. You have LEGO horses up your ass." Said, "Good news is you're stable. Get it? You're stable." Oh, my gosh. How inappropriate, but it's episode 13. Roll.

• 0:36Scott Galloway?

  Today on the pod, we're speaking with Dorothy Brown, a professor of law at Emory University. She's a recognized scholar in tax policy race and class and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. She joins us today to contextualize what's going on concerning the protests and where the country goes from here. After that conversation, we'll have office hours and wrap up with our algebra of happiness. Okay, let's talk about the news. The S and P 500 has erased its 2020 losses. It's escalated more than 44% since its March lows. And NASDAQ hit an all-time high. What the fuck? The World Bank says the global economy shrank,

• 1:20Scott Galloway?

  or will shrink, by over 5% in 2020, and yet the market is at an all-time high. What is going on here? I have some thoughts. I have some thoughts, some not so surprising, some sort of surprising. So first off, when we talk about the NASDAQ and the S and P, one of the worst things we can do is assume that this is a proxy for the broader health of the economy. It's forward-looking. It's meant to be a reflection of who we are as a people, but it is not, or no longer, it really is an accurate indicator of what is going on in the broader economy. Why? Because when you're talking about publicly traded stocks, first off, you're talking about half as many companies as just 20 years ago, and something like a third as many 30 years ago because of mergers and acquisitions

• 2:04Scott Galloway?

  or companies going out of business. When you talk about publicly traded stocks, you're talking about the best-performing companies, sort of the best of the best. And you're talking about companies with access to capital. And where are those companies? On the NYSE and on the NASDAQ. So the markets have hit all-time highs. There is a total detachment now. From the stock market and the kind of main street economy, the other less obvious, the other less obvious trend that is taking place here that is just fascinating, I mean, blow your mind kind of fascinating is that we love to gamble. There's a DOPA hit when the, you know, the slot machine is about to stop. It's fun to bet. It's something we've done for a long time. I'm not entirely sure

• 2:49Scott Galloway?

  what instinct that calls on, but effectively what has happened is think about this, there has been an enormous destruction in supply of opportunities to gamble. Can't go to Vegas, the dog would be in Vegas.

• 3:04Scott Galloway?

  I am such a better version of me in Vegas. I typically like to dress up. I wear some crazy midlife crisis canary yellow jacket. I sometimes wear a kilt. The dog has a kilt and I break it out when I'm in Vegas. Great conversation starter. Great conversation starter. Vegas is out. No one's in Vegas or very few. And, and think about this, there's been a total destruction in sports, meaning, meaning one of the biggest industries in the shadow economy, sports betting, has gone away. So where can you bet? Where do you have to do research, make calculated risk, make a bet and get that DOPA hit, hit that, that primal sensor of winning or losing? You guessed it, the stock market, the number of

• 3:48Scott Galloway?

  new accounts reported by TD Ameritrade, by Schwab, by Robinhood has skyrocketed. So we've seen an entirely new cohort enter the market. The retail market may be driving or these speculators, these gamblers, there's people that would be at the horse track or in Caesar's casino book, whatever they call it, where they bet on sports or call their bookie, are now betting on stocks. And supposedly the professional investor class is on the sidelines because they're just like, don't get it, or they don't understand how this has happened. Is that sustainable? What happens to stocks? I don't know. According to CNBC, data tracked between May 31st and June 6th shows Biden spent over, or approximately

• 4:33Scott Galloway?

  five million on Facebook ads and Trump spent about 1.2 million. Supposedly the controversy of the civil unrest, I don't know what the correct term for it is. Has sparked a wave of giving across Democratic candidates. And obviously, Democrats are excited that the handling, if you will, if you can even call it that, of both the pandemic and the civil unrest has not shed the current administration in a good light, and Democrats are trying to take advantage of it. Speaking of Facebook, speaking of Facebook, I think the perfect description for Mark Zuckerberg, or the new moniker for Mark Zuckerberg, is that he is the world's most successful oligarch. What is an oligarch?

• 5:13Scott Galloway?

  An oligarch is someone who uses their proximity, or exploits their proximity to power, to garner massive wealth in a corrupt manner. Right? We think of oligarchs in Russia, where I become close to Putin, I give him or her 10%, supposedly Putin is the wealthiest man in the world, 10% of my profits that are ill-gained by getting Putin to basically shut down my competitors, or some other form of corruption. That is kind of the definition of corruption, if you will, and that is state-sponsored theft. What do we have here? The mother of all unholy alliances, where the orange man has decided, "Orange man, that's a little disparaging. Why don't we just call him Orange Hitler?" By the way, I do think there are some appropriate analogies, and I think it's time to start

• 5:57Scott Galloway?

  comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, his own police force, the use of a new medium, similar to a way Hitler used radio, demonization of immigrants, a refusal to condemn violence against one's perceived political threats. I don't, I don't, and everyone says it couldn't happen here, just as we said, "Oh, oh, the virus can't get here, we're just too fucking cool, we're too awesome for the, for the virus to actually come here." No, the virus didn't get the memo on how exceptional America is, just as we didn't think that could happen here, there's a notion that somehow what happened in the middle of the 20th century in Europe couldn't happen here, sure could happen here. Look at Germany, pre-World War II, a very advanced society, incredibly culturally rich, incredible technology.

• 6:42Scott Galloway?

  And a massive appreciation for the arts and culture. And then a madman took advantage of economic strife and convinced an angry populace that we should begin rounding up people. Oh, we would never round up people. Yeah, we did. We did it when your grandparents were alive. It was called internment camps, where we put Japanese Americans behind barbed wire for no other reason than they were Japanese. Anyways, I do think it's time to start openly and honestly asking ourselves what kind of similarities we see and how we cauterize that as soon as possible. In November, a bit of a political ad there, and I know that's not where you come here. But anyways, in other news, the editors of the opinion page for the New York Times,

• 7:27Scott Galloway?

  James Bennett and the managing editor, I believe he was the managing editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, were both fired for insensitive articles, opinion op-eds, whatever you want to call it, or poor decision making around titles. In the case of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the title was Buildings Matter Two, or Building Lives. Basically, a journalist wrote an article about physical destruction eluding, and the editor chose the title Buildings Matter Two, which was a stupid title and insensitive. And then James Bennett was a little bit more controversial. He posted an op-ed from Tom Cotton, and they felt that it was just so false, so poorly fact-checked, that it just reflected terrible judgment.

• 8:07Scott Galloway?

  And I find this disturbing in the sense that we're in that part of the cycle with a controversy or civil unrest or a movement, and this is a movement, and it was overdue. And I would say 90% of it is inspiring. But we also run the risk that it's so raw and so sensitive that if you don't sign up for the prescribed orthodoxy of the movement, and that orthodoxy is

• 8:34Scott Galloway?

  In this instance, either very far right or very far left, again, more polarization, you run the risk of being canceled. And I worry that we are, if we don't open ourselves to a dialogue, if we just demand everyone sign up for the most extreme version of our orthodoxy, or they're our enemy and deserve to be called out and shamed and canceled, that we don't invite a constructive dialogue such that we can shape more enduring, lasting change. If we don't get moderates, if we don't get people from all points of the political spectrum to have a productive dialogue around what does it mean to actually defund police? Do we end up with private militias that rich people control? You know, what does it mean?

• 9:19Scott Galloway?

  What does it mean for unions? What are the benchmarks? I think the idea of totally reshaping police forces is super interesting when I think about London Bob, he's not carrying guns. I think about UCLA. We had a fairly small police department, the UCPD is what we called them, but we had a much larger community service organization called CSO, as community service officers. And these were young men and women who were students, who were given a blue jacket and this powerful weapon called a walkie-talkie. They were mostly used just to escort women around campus at night who were worried about walking alone through kind of dark, foresty areas of campus. But it was powerful and they had the walkie-talkie and the people felt safer.

• 10:00Scott Galloway?

  And if they saw something or sensed or observed something that might escalate to danger or crime, they then called the cops. And it struck me as community-based policing and very effective and also very cost-effective. And when you think about it, if you think about how we're addressing poverty, how we're addressing mental illness, how we're addressing addiction, we're doing it with police, firearms, and jail. And regardless of the morality, just economically, it's just too goddamn expensive.

• 10:33Scott Galloway?

  So we need to rethink law enforcement. But when we, when the orthodoxy is that all police are bad and that police are prone to violence and that all police are racist, you immediately shut out a large swath of the population that would like to have a constructive conversation around a new approach to policing. And I think we end up with change that is more reactionary and then it dies down. And the people who don't want to do anything or don't want to see change because they're fed up with the extremism of the orthodoxy of either side, just take advantage of our democracy, which kind of lends itself to inertia and they will wait it out and there'll

• 11:16Scott Galloway?

  be very little enduring change. And I worry that the firing of people based on one frame in the movie that is their career is evidence that we are not yet at a point where we can have a productive dialogue around shaping, innovation shaping, reform, the results in enduring change. Okay, enough preaching from the dog, enough howling at the moon. Let's pay the bills. A girl's gotta eat. Stick around.

• 11:48Scott Galloway?

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• 12:30Scott Galloway?

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• 12:48Scott Galloway?

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• 13:33Scott Galloway?

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• 14:04Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Dorothy Brown, professor of law at Emory University School of Law and a nationally recognized scholar in tax policy, race, and class. Professor Brown, welcome to Prof G. Where does this podcast find you?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  It finds me in my house on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

• 14:22Scott Galloway?

  Let's buzz right into it. It's obviously been an illuminating past two weeks, the protests in the wake of George Floyd's death.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:30Scott Galloway?

  You know, illuminate much more than just police brutality. Can you provide some context for these protests? And if there's sort of what the underpinnings reflect around the current state of our country and our economy?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think there's a direct line between the protests and economic inequality. When we think about the overpolicing, that is a function of budgetary decisions, right? So state and local governments decide how much to spend on whatever it is they want to spend, K through 12, police, and we've seen money that's spent on the police are used to overpolice black Americans. And let me just point out, black Americans are taxpayers and are paying into those state and local budgets that are then overpolicing them. So there is a direct line between racial justice and policing and racial justice and

• 15:26Speaker 02

  economic inequality. And you're seeing kind of like a liberating moment that people are saying, yes, we saw George Floyd murdered, and that's awful, and we need police reform or defunding police, right? We also say, but wait a minute, there's systemic racism everywhere. It isn't just in the policing system. And that's what this movement has been about. It has been about moving the calls for police reform into virtually every other area that I can think of. And we haven't seen that before.

• 16:05Scott Galloway?

  So let's, I'd love to just throw some theses at you, and you respond and tell me where I've got it right and where I've got it wrong. And that is, I think that almost everything around our economic policy is meant to, at its root, transfer wealth from young people to old people. And if you look at young people, they tend to be more multiracial, represent that the minority is about to become the majority, and that the current kind of power structure is all about figuring out ways, initially to hold people of color back, but now it feels like the best way to do that is just to kind of hold young people back. Do you see any merit in that, in that thinking?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  You know, not really. And here's what I would say. I'd say the status quo is designed to transfer wealth to white men, old white men. So I wouldn't limit it to just young to old. I would say everything is designed to transfer.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Wealth to old white people, right? Because if you're saying young to old, then it would suggest old black Americans are benefiting from this, and that's not what we see. So I would say everything is designed to maintain the status quo, which is old white guys who have been running things for a really long time, continuing to prime and groom other old or soon to be old white guys to take over when they retire.

• 17:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's a, it's a fair point. I've, I've often reflected in the nineties when I was starting internet companies, and I was raising a lot of money. And I, I remember, now I look back and think ninety-eight percent of the capital raise that I observed was from a profile, and the profile was white heterosexual males. You know, we were all so proud of ourselves in the startup community when Planet Out got funding, that we started funding gay white males. We saw that as really liberating. Uh, but women were held out of the party, and people of color just had absolutely, they didn't, you know, didn't even know where the address was. It, it, it's strange, I'm embarrassed by how natural it seemed, or that we didn't recognize it as, as unnatural.

• 18:17Scott Galloway?

  So, uh, it seems like criminal justice or, or our approach to prisons, policing are absolutely kind of baked in, in terms of systemic racism. What are the less obvious means of which there is kind of this underpinning of racism in our society?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  So what's been interested in me about, and, and the reason why I think criminal justice reform issues are easier to recognize is there are videos. We don't see video, there's been a, um, Black in the Ivory for, for black Americans in higher education. There's been hashtag publishing paid me. So you're, you're seeing now conversations about the publishing industry where you see black authors not getting the advances white authors are. You see black professors talking about their horror stories. Those things are just as evident, but not material. They're not everywhere. They're not, we don't have videos, you know?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  So I would say systemic racism is everywhere. I write about it in the tax system, for example, and most people go, what? Yeah, people don't think about it because the IRS doesn't collect the data. And people think, oh, when we talk about tax policy, we're really talking about poor people. And my pushback has always been, no, we're talking about racial inequality that isn't just felt by poor taxpayers. So you see systemic racism everywhere, but the public doesn't necessarily see it everywhere.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  But what I see this movement as doing is opening eyes to a lot of white Americans about how widespread systemic racism really is. They, they may have started this quest with, oh, it's just in the policing and we fix the policing, we'll move on. And then we see the debacle in Georgia with their voting yesterday.

• 20:22Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  And the pictures that showed if you were in a racially diverse neighborhood, you had tremendous lines, hours and hours of waiting. But if you were in a white neighborhood, virtually no line. So there really isn't an area that is immune to a systemic racism analysis.

• 20:45Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, we had Peter Henry, the dean of, my boss from NYU Stern, and he, he highlighted that if you think about, the Republican Party has kind of become the party of old white guys. I mean, there's just no, there's no other, I think it's a pretty apt description. And they are resisting the minority becoming the majority in that their go-to tactic has become voter suppression, that he thinks that is really the biggest issue facing us. They don't want to compete. Their strategy is just to suppress the vote.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  And many of them have been saying the quiet part out loud lately. We don't want voting, you know, by mail because then a Republican will never win again. I mean, elected Republican officials have actually said that. So suddenly we're not in a democracy.

• 21:33Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's, it's frightening to think that there, not only it's there, but it's just so brazen. Um, let's talk a little bit about tax policy. I've never understood why we don't go back to the Reagan era and we just have income. We have income that sweat earns, current income. We have income that your money earns in the form of capital gains. And I don't know if it was intended this way, but it strikes me that if when you have white households own the majority of stocks and assets.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:04Scott Galloway?

  That effectively what you're doing is you're transferring wealth again from people of color who tend to get the majority of their income from current income at taxed at a higher rate. And the majority of capital gains income flows to white households who pay a lower rate. I mean, isn't that just straightforward transfer from one party to the other?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yes, I completely agree with you. And I think the eighty six Tax Reform Act that Reagan championed where wages and income from stock were treated the same. And it lasted about two years.

• 22:36Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  It lasted about two years, right? Because people were like, no, we should tax capital less. Why? There's really no good reason to tax capital less. It's just that you have the votes, right? So you can now tax capital less.

• 22:50Scott Galloway?

  There's been a lot of, so let's talk about corporate America. There's been a lot recently, a lot of what, and I think you agree with this, very performative statements. You know, we stand with George Floyd and we are appalled by racism. And if, and we've all, you know, our all white board has agrees, you know, it's sort of, it feels very performative. And by the way, I'm guilty of this. I sit on a board and I, you know, this is really, you were talking about educating white people. And I'm one of those people that's going through an education process. And one of the things I've noticed is I kind of look left and look right on a lot of the corporate boards I'm on, and we all look very similar. And what, talk about corporate America and what, how actions, how the music can match the word.

• 23:34Scott Galloway?

  How can the actions start to foot to the words being put out?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's an, that's an excellent question. And I think the first thing, and the other, you know, performative statement is Black Lives Matter. Okay, so yeah, so we've got these corporations saying these slogans. And if you were to ask your employees, do they think the company thinks black lives matter? They would likely say no. So the first thing I would say is instead of the statements, now let's be clear, statements are important, right? So if I'm a black employee and I'm like stressed because I'm dealing with watching the video, I'm dealing with incidents in my own family, I'm dealing with all this, I like that my employer puts out a statement, but that's step one.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Step two has to be, what am I doing to root out and eradicate the systemic racism in my workplace? It starts to me with the board, right? So you need a board that shows Black Lives Matter. Not that says Black Lives Matter, but that shows Black Lives Matter. So that's step one. You need to diversify your board in a meaningful way. The second thing you have to do, I would say, is listen to your employees. Now, here's the thing, most of us who work in places, if it's a safe space, they'll tell you, well, why don't we do it this way?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  But the first time they do it and they get shut down, they don't do it anymore. So if you want to know what's going on, if I were a CEO, I would provide a space for anonymous input, so that the employee would not worry about being retaliated against. And if I were a board who really cared about this issue, I would make the CEO's continued employment conditioned on racial diversity numbers getting up, retention numbers getting up. I would say, in addition to share price, because we know share price is important,

• 25:41Speaker 02

  I would make the CEO accountable for moving us forward. And I'm sure most CEOs are not equipped for this, right? So they would figure it out, though, right? If their jobs were on the line, they would be incentivized to do better.

• 25:58Scott Galloway?

  The hard part there, as I just think this through, is when you start

• 26:03Scott Galloway?

  You know, do you disarm unilaterally? I wonder if you need some sort of legislation or regulation because or to encourage investors to buy the stocks of companies that are achieving those goals. Because when you place any sort of constraints or regulation or on a board, the fear is that, okay, we're disarming unilaterally and other companies that aren't subject to these same standards will have an easier time, at least in the short term, outperforming us. But maybe, maybe at the end of the day, if you're just skating to where the puck is, it's a, I see your point. I apologize, I'm going around.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  So I would, you know, here's what I, I think that's a legitimate pushback. And here's what I would say, right now, you're not getting the maximum potential out of your employees.

• 26:45Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Your employees have great ideas, and when they give them, they get shot down and then they stop giving them. And I think the market would react in a positive way, not a negative way. What CEOs are currently underestimating is how much less they're getting out of their black employees than they would be if their black employees were empowered to soar.

• 27:11Scott Galloway?

  And let's talk, let's go back to tax policy. What two or three changes could we make to the tax code that would both make a healthier economy and also address some of these systemic issues?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  So first is what we talked about, tax income from wages at the same rate as income from capital. Income is income is income. There is no distinction.

• 27:32Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  That's the first thing. The second thing is, look at the subsidies for homeownership. I've, I've written about this, I've talked about this. Homeownership is a decidedly race-based asset. Overwhelming majority of white Americans own homes, they're, you know, a minority of black and Latinx Americans own homes, but we have tax-subsidized homeownership, which basically means, right, renters

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Which are disproportionately black and Latino or subsidizing.

• 28:06Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Right, there you go. I knew you'd like that, right? So why don't we examine our, and I'd say get rid of them, our tax subsidies for homeownership? If you care about housing, then let's have tax subsidies for housing. But there's no reason why we should subsidize such a race-based asset, especially in light of the government's role in making it a race-based asset.

• 28:33Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think that's such a powerful point. The two largest tax subsidies in America are the deductions on capital gains and mortgage tax interest. And if you look at them, distinctive this notion that owning a home is the American dream, which is a tagline brought to you by the National Association of Realtors. Both, both of those tax deductions, the largest, the most expensive tax deductions in our society, do exactly what you're talking about. They transfer wealth from one cohort, primarily people of color and younger people, to older white people. Talk a little bit about, what would you like to see happen? If there was regulation, in addition to this tax policy we had discussed, can you think of any specific regulation that is, you think is overdue, that would, that we need to immediately think about?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  So part of me thinks the mandate would be transparency.

• 29:23Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  That put out, require the numbers to be published on websites.

• 29:30Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  What percent of your board is black? What percent of your executives are black? What percent of your workforce are black? And what types of jobs do they hold? Right? So those companies that have a customer base that's very racially diverse.

• 29:48Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  They would be embarrassed. And you would see shortly before the due date for the publication of the numbers.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Board appointments announced. That's my guess.

• 30:01Scott Galloway?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  So that's what I would say, transparency.

• 30:04Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I've seen some numbers around the number of black executives at Apple. And it's just been, I mean, it's just sort of shocking. It's sort of rattling. Okay, that that's it. So the firing of, there's been high profile firings and, you know, they say they resigned, but let's be honest, they were fired. The head of the opinion section.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  You took my CrossFit?

• 30:24Scott Galloway?

  Well, CrossFit, but let's be honest, that guy just had, I don't want to say had it coming. That guy just seems, strikes me like to be an idiot. Okay, finally, he was an idiot at the wrong time and he got fired. The head of the opinion section of the editorial page of the New York Times, James Bennett, the editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Bon appétit.

• 30:41Scott Galloway?

  Bon appétit. Are these, do you think these are just, these are people that should have been fired? And finally, we're starting to fire white guys when they deserve it. It's overdue. Or is, are we in an era where there is, quite frankly, if you're over the age of 50 and white, and maybe it's time, you're kind of walking around with a grenade in your hand with the pen out. Is this, are these firings overdue? Or are we in an era where it is just a dangerous, where there's just so much emotion and it's so raw that you put out a bad headline and you get fired?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  I think it's overdue. And I think you can't fall on your past record as a defense for some of the heinous things that happened, right? So the Philadelphia Inquirer compared buildings to people. Okay, well, you know, black Americans, we were, we were property, right? So really, really, somebody, somebody had to tell you that? You know, as a, New York Times, he published an op ed that basically called for tear gassing and violence against protesters.

• 31:49Scott Galloway?

  Yep.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  That are going to disproportionately impact black Americans. And. He doubled down. People forget this. He doubled down. He acted like his black employees were being emotional and they didn't want both, you know, they didn't want to hear things they didn't want to agree with. And then he was very dismissive, very dismissive. And quite frankly, had he not handled it like that, he might still have his job. That's the problem. It's the arrogance that comes with these positions. And they're so used to ignoring black voices without consequences. You can make a mistake and you can say, I'm sorry. And if it's sincere, people will forgive you.

• 32:33Scott Galloway?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  But when you double down, we know the apology isn't sincere because your first reaction, when nobody was looking, when you thought you wouldn't be accountable, was you know what? You just need to grow up. Snowplagues, in effect. Really? Really?

• 32:47Scott Galloway?

  Let me ask you something more generally outside of this specific issue. We both teach, you know, global campuses or big, big schools. And I worry that there is a trend on campuses that if you don't subscribe to a specific orthodoxy that is usually, for lack of a better term, progressive, that the environment is such that it doesn't really foster an open debate or what I think is one of our missions, and that is to provoke. And I worry that some of this, I think the term was just great awakening, that it might be stifling dialogue and without a dialogue, and I would like to think a campus is a good place to have this dialogue, that we never really register enduring change because we have a large cohort

• 33:32Scott Galloway?

  that just goes silent and becomes resentful of the fact that there really isn't a market or an arena for open debate. Any thoughts?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yes, I have lots of thoughts. And my first is, I don't think our campuses are all that progressive. And if you've ever talked to black students on your campus, you would know that. So, and I'm not saying you, you, I'm saying people who say this is progressive would know that. So, I taught a Ferguson Movement course at Emory a few years ago, and it was open to every, it was a university course, open to every student. At the university, so I had a bunch of undergrads in there. And the stories they would tell me about what their racist white faculty would say in class.

• 34:15Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Would make my hair stand on end. So I always push back at this notion that there's this progressive orthodoxy. Because how do you define progressive? Because I would say if there's a progressive orthodoxy, there's a racist progressive orthodoxy. And it's an anti-black racist, so that's a problem. Number two, everybody isn't good at facilitating a controversial conversation.

• 34:42Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  So this notion that all classes ought to be about provoking winds up terrorizing students who look like me. That it really isn't this open debate. It's room for someone to say the N-word in class. No, that's not open for debate. I don't want to hear that crap. So people don't think about the impacts on their students, particularly their black students in these spaces. That's why, you know, every few years you hear black students complaining. Hello, we need more black faculty. We need more black administrators. We need more people who can help us. So this wokeness is a myth. I haven't seen it.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I've been a law professor since nineteen ninety-one. I have never seen this wokeness. I've never seen this orthodoxy. It's particularly, and I want to be specific about anti-black racism. That the stories you would hear if you were to ask for them from our black students would be a story not of, oh, I feel so welcomed in the classroom. Oh, my professor made me. No, they're like, I'm hiding. I'm, I don't want to get called on. I don't want to answer. Or, you know, I have, I've heard of con law professors who were so, who think they're so clever when they call on the black student to argue against Brown v. Board of Ed. Really?

• 36:12Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  That's open debate? That's offensive.

• 36:16Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  And it isn't about, well, lawyers have to be able to argue both sides. Why'd you pick the black kid?

• 36:21Scott Galloway?

  Right.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  You, Professor, were being very race conscious in that decision. And the student doesn't have a chance to say, you know, we're not, we don't empower our students to say, "No, thank you."

• 36:33Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'll set that one on. So, question, we always, we always like to ask people for advice. We have a very young and a very male viewership. What advice do you have for young people in this? What are the takeaways here? What would you advise in terms of learning, trying to be more thoughtful about this topic, trying to engage in it in a productive way? What advice would you have?

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Yes, and this is hard for a lot of really bright, white males. Be quiet and listen. It was one of the lessons, one of my white male students in my Ferguson course taught me, he said, "Professor Brown, I've learned, be quiet and listen to what the students of color have to say because they have an important perspective." So, the first thing I would say is, "You're not an expert, so read up on it." What do you do when you're not an expert? You read, right? So, get a book. White Fragility is one of the books I've been recommending people to read because the title is, "White Fragility: Why Is It So Hard for White Americans to Talk About Race?" Okay, so step one, do some reading.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Step two, if you are as upset about the video as I am, then become an ally. And think about, once you educate yourself, ways that you could intervene on behalf of your black colleagues as opposed to silencing them, right? So, if something happens, somebody tells, or, or forget their black colleagues, they're in a group and it's just a bunch of white guys and they're joking around and somebody makes a racist joke. And you're offended by it, but you don't say anything because you don't want to get kicked out of a social club. Decide it's not worth being in the social club if your price is listening to racist jokes. There are little things you can do and there are big things you can do.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  I'd say start with the little things.

• 38:30Scott Galloway?

  Dorothy Brown is a professor of law at Emory University School of Law, a nationally recognized scholar in tax policy, race, and class, and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. Professor Brown, thanks for joining us and stay safe.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 38:46Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.