Episode Details

In this episode, Razib talks to Wilfred Reilly, political scientist, author and fearless cultural commentator. Reilly holds a Ph.D. in political science from Southern Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Illinois. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, he discusses his ten-year diversion from academia, including his stints as a canvasser for the gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign and a corporate salesperson. A prolific public intellectual, Reilly is the author of Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me,  Taboo: 10 Facts [You Can't Talk About] and Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left Is Selling a Fake Race War.

Razib asks what it means to be a "black conservative," and Reilly responds that the term brackets all black intellectuals who dissent from the progressive orthodoxy, ranging from rock-ribbed right-wingers like Thomas Sowell to moderate liberals like John McWhorter. They also discuss the excesses of Civil Rights legislation and Richard Hanania's thesis in The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics that the legal system is geared toward racial progressivism. Reilly believes that wokeness cannot be rolled back until that institutional and legal framework driving for radicalism is neutered.

Segueing into the domain of political science, Razib and Reilly discuss the difference between avowed preferences and revealed preferences around issues like abortion and pornography. Bot