Social Justice - A Conversation

Speaker 1 0:00
This is a k, u and v studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Speaker 2 0:18
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

Speaker 3 0:24
Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.

Speaker 2 0:28
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation a

Unknown Speaker 0:33
conversation.

Speaker 2 0:35
Well, good evening, everybody. Glad to be back with you. This is Professor Charles Stanton. I'm glad as always to be joined by my partner in these broadcasts Gabriela Tam, hello. And we're going to we have a full plate today of many, many things that are going on in our country, some almost unbelievable things and some things that have existed for a long time. I wanted to get the get the ball rolling, and, of course, get Gabrielle's insights on on this having to deal with the state of Florida. And the fact now that the state of Florida has mandated that the state universities are not allowed to teach sociology as part of their curriculum. And I just, you know, there are certain things like can you just, you'd like shake your head. And I always say that, among a certain group of people in our country, they have two main fears. One main fear is the fear of education, the fear that the population will be educated, and exactly know what's going on and what what has gone in our history. But the second fear, I call it, the terror of knowledge, that basically, you would think in life granted the fact that you're alive, and you've been given the mind to think that you would, you would want to learn, you would want to find out things that you didn't know, before, you would want to understand our history, our traditions, you know, how the country was built. And also explore a lot of the issues that sociology does, of course, which which has gender, and, and upbringing, and all the different social issues that make us more informed and make us understand other people. But apparently, in Florida, that's not the case. So

Speaker 3 2:38
from, like we've discussed before, like, they just want to get rid of diversity, equity and inclusion, right? It's just like we've talked about, like, it's so shocking, like, America is literally like, diversity, equity and inclusion, if it was like, an ideal ideal America, of course, but like, we are so diverse, like, how are you? Like, how can you exclude all these people, you're going to just kick all these people out of your your state, you're going to let all these kids just have no idea how, like, the rest of the world is? You know, like, that's just it's just crazy to be to hear that.

Speaker 2 3:24
Yeah. Yeah. Well, sure it is. It's crazy to hear it. But it's a it's a, it's a philosophy that has existed for a long time. But I think it's become more pronounced now. I think we're moving into a political climate, where facts are unimportant. History is unimportant. Learning is unimportant. And you have a whole group of people, not just people who are older, but people who are, are younger, who are being deprived in their education of certain things. That is absolutely important for them to know, regarding, you know, what we're all about, you know, what, what, what our past was, what things can be done to make our country better? You know, there was there was that the, you know, the clip that have showed in a lot of the classes, that newsroom clip where the guy sitting with the other two panelists, and they're all asked to say, Why is America the greatest country on Earth? And of course, he he sort of debunks it and he says, you know, we, we had much greatness in us, but a lot of the greatness got lost. Yeah. And that's, and that's our search for truth and our search for knowledge and all the rest of those things were obscured, and we hit a lot of things that were things that we could have corrected. As you know, we have a situation where we have a terrible homeless problem, we have a situation where we have a terrible problem with illiteracy, and a lot of cases where people, people are not educated at property. We have the highest rate of people in our society being incarcerated. We have all these different things. And he him, of course, he finishes his monologue with, with with the profound statement that, you know, no problem can be solved unless you acknowledge the problem. Yeah. And that's, and that's what it seems that they don't want to do. And we can we can segue from that right into the, the whole situation with the immigration and what's going on on the border. And the situation is a serious situation. And of course, you know, everyone knows, logically speaking that you cannot, you cannot take everybody and there has to be some kind of limitation on it. But, you know, Biden has taken a lot of heat for this situation, and some of it deservedly so. But finally, Biden, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, what have you, they reached it, they reached an agreement on, you know, trying to try to remedy some of what's been going on. The bill can't be passed because the house won't pass it. Why won't the house pass it? Not because it's not a valid bill, not because it doesn't do things to try to make the immigrations process better. But because the ex presidents hold the Speaker of the House and other people in the house, that the bill can't be passed, because everybody wants to continue to blame Joe Biden for the immigration process. So let's keep it that way. And let's not pass any was, oh, that could make it better. And I'm thinking to myself, Well, if that's the case, if you're you're in the Congress, if you're a congress person, and you are supposedly serving us, the people in the United States, regardless of race, color, creed, or anything else, and you have the opportunity to pass a bill, then do some good in the world, do some good answer, try to make the crisis better. And basically, you can pass the bill, because one person is telling you that if you pass the bill, it will it will affect my attempt to get real to get elected to the presidency again, we want to keep things as the way they are. So as the situation deteriorates, more and more people will blame the the current president. And there's something like radically wrong there. There's something radically wrong.

Speaker 3 7:58
I think it's just a ruin. Like Biden's chances are like people are like, Oh, he's not even doing anything. Why would I want to vote for him? Yeah, again? Sure. Sure. That's actually it's sad. It's sad and very manipulative. You

Speaker 2 8:13
have Yeah, I mean, he has, he has a lot of problems now. Otherwise, I mean, he's, he's a very fluid candidate. visa vie, the situation in the Middle East. A lot of the people who voted for him, young people, people of color, are very disaffected with him. But in this, at least he was he was trying to, you know, get something done. And the problem is people aren't educated and people aren't informed. So the problem is, you know, people will say, Well, you know, it was his fault and well rested stuff. But Biden, Chuck's Chuck Schumer, even Mitch McConnell, who was a Republican, and they had a lot of Republican support in the Senate for this bill. They're not the ones who are keeping the situation the way it is. It's the people who are trying to obstruct laws being passed. You know, so that's so that's, so that's, that's part of it. That's

Speaker 3 9:13
like, that's so sad. It's also like, I was thinking like, how are you going to? I was thinking like a lot of things like one like, oh, it's sad up first, like, for every single like, election, or at least, like every election that I could vote, it's always like, Okay, I have to vote between the lesser of two evils. Sure. And it shouldn't be like that I should be voting for like, okay, like, which one do I truly do think like, will benefit the country I live in, you know, and then another thing was like, how are you gonna, like, listen to it, like, I fully like believe that if Trump really like, just if people saw him for the He's the man he is. Like, they would just be like, okay, like, why are we listening, listening to this man? Like, he doesn't make sense. Yeah. And like we've discussed before, like, I've or like, I'm like, he's a businessman. Like He's different. He's different from politicians. But like, Oh, he's always like return or his tax returns, we're all like, frauds. How are you going to like, to me as like that, just really like that, like, we lose all reliability? To me? Yeah.

Speaker 2 10:32
Well, I think I think a lot of it is because people are uninformed. I know this, there's two things there's a lack of is a lack of knowledge. The lack of knowledge is tied to the lack of information, the lack of information is tied to the lack of people's curiosity. So what I mean by that is to say, you want to find the truth, you want to want to get the widest spread of opinions. Yeah. So you know, what I do every morning, I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and USA Today, Wall Street Journal is a very conservative newspaper. Yeah, New York Times is a very liberal newspaper. And I would say USA Today is, is sort of liberal, but it's pretty much in the middle. It's not very conservative or very liberal. So you get all that information, and you evaluate all that information. And then you make an informed decision. I use the word informed decision on what you think politics should be, obviously, obviously, the fact that out of 350 million plus people that live in our in our beloved country, that these are the two major candidates is, of course, extraordinarily disturbing. Yeah. That you that this is the best we could do that. There's nobody else out there. I think so my thought on this. And I'm I mean, I'm not, I'm not a soothsayer, or prophet, or any of those things. I think there's a large possibility that by the time election day comes around, we may be seeing two other people running for this office. I think that I think that there's a lot of democratic disaffection with Joe Biden. Yeah. And I think that it was, I guess it was, oh, boy, was, I think it was four or five days ago. They had a whole bunch of articles on Michelle Obama, that they were that that's what they were thinking of doing, as having her run. And that apparently, there were people who had who had gone to talk to, to Biden and his people and told them that they needed to rev their campaign up, that their campaign wasn't really working the way it was supposed to. Yeah. And there was a lot of like, there was a lot of unhappiness with it. But on the other side, too, if if the if the charges against the ex president come to trial, and that's, of course, the question now when that's going to be, but if those if those charges come to trial, and they deliver on felony charges, a gift of a gift, a verge of guilty, they will drop him, they will drop him, I don't know who they would get at that point to run, but they won't run somebody who has been convicted of a felony. I'm sure that I hope so. We would hope so. I mean, there's that there's something so many other things that that have, certainly, you know, boggled my mind. But But I think I think that's one of the things that's going to happen. But segwaying from that on to a discussion of AI, which, you know, I have, I have always I've spoken about this before. And again, you know, the man one of the men who was responsible for the creation of AI renounced it. So right away, that should be a warning signs people. That's a red flag. Yeah. The man who created the thing is basically disavowing what he did. Okay. Anyway, couple of things struck me on on January, on January 31, The New York Times had a huge article about about AI and how they were using pictures that children

Unknown Speaker 14:50
there's a lot of things with AI

Speaker 2 14:52
Oh, kinds of all kinds of stuff that was that was was was against the law. And you know, a lot of times A lot of terrible ways. And they got into basically the fact that there weren't a lot of safeguards for what people would view. And I think I think that's, that's a major problem that has not been addressed. And, of course, also on the 31st, they had the hearing and Congress of all these people who were will different surge agent, surge agents, and all the rest of that stuff. And these and these platforms, and they've had these hearings before, but nothing ever seems to be resolved. You see, this is the thing. And again, a whatever always reminds me of is that people believed that the government represents them, that the people are represented by the people in the house and people in the Senate, and those are our representatives. But the truth of the matter is, that those people in the Senate and those people in the house, who are representatives, who actually do the work of the people are exceptions. They're in the minority. Yeah. Because the vast majority of people in there are now representing us, the vast majority people who are in there, representing themselves. Yeah, yeah. And they're representing big business, big oil, and money, money, corporate America, while the rest of us agreed, how are we, you know, it sounds you know, and when you know, somebody to listen to say, Well, they say that's, that's, that's socialism, what you're saying, you know, you're, you're against the corporations. And that has nothing to do with it. What it's about is democracy, democracy, democracy, ultimately, at its ideal, is a system of government of checks and balances of an image of an our country of courts, of legislatures, and ultimately, the president, while working sometimes across purposes, but each one checking the other one. So nobody abuses the power that was given that was given and the document written by the founders. And you just see these hearings. And it's like watching a replay of a hearing that happened three months ago. And the hearing happened three months before that. They never get they never get to doing anything to regulate stuff that should never be allowed to be seen by anybody. And you have these exploited children. And, you know, their families? And of course, of course, that's one of the problems that you have, then you had the problem with with, I guess it was last week or so with Taylor Swift, where they were putting out all these images on the on on these platforms of all kinds of sexual inappropriate stuff stuff. So so this is also very troubling. Because what is what is Taylor Swift crime? What has Taylor Swift done? So anybody? Well, outside of being a maybe the world's greatest selling artists of music, Taylor Swift made a terrible mistake in her life. And I'm not talking about going out with the guy who plays to the Kansas City. The mistake that she made is this that she's been sponsoring, and promoting voter registration. Oh, and you see, voter registration, getting people to vote, having people vote is the enemy of the people who don't believe that everybody should have the right to vote. They don't believe in fairness, equity, inclusion, diversity, whatever, whatever however you want to put it. And because she has this platform, Taylor Swift is huge, because she has this platform reaching, reaching young people. She is their enemy. Because the prognosis of having all these people being able to vote means that a lot of the power structures of the country are going to be dissolved. Because you'll have you'll have a socially progressive.

Speaker 3 19:48
That's, that's the younger people and that's, that's a woman. Right,

Speaker 2 19:51
exactly. Okay, so, so those two groups of people, both of whom were discriminated against, are fine. Your voice. And she and she's and their voice is being amplified through her. And she wants people to vote. Now, of course, if you look at if you think about it logically, impartially, fairly, what she's doing is great, because she's trying to she's trying to encourage young people to be barred to be part of the process, to embrace democracy, to raise their voice, to vote, to promote, you know, issues having to deal with young people, and, and, of course, the women's movement as well. But if the reaction is exactly the opposite, you see, now, my thing is my thing about this whole thing is, and I've said this, you know, a lot of times, you will never change, you will never change corporate America, you will never change the power structures in corporate America, you will never change the misdeeds of corporate America. Unless you do two things. The first thing you have to do, because there's always settlements, and as always, you know, they pay so much money and all the rest of this stuff. The only way you stop it is you pass laws. In a congress, obviously, that would be inclined to do that. And it can't just be Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, or any of those people can't be the same people, same people always and nobody listens to them. But you pass, you pass laws that hold officers of the corporation, and directors of the corporation, criminally responsible for for doing these things, whether it's whether it's selling poisonous drugs, whether it's selling contaminated food, whether it's allowing pornographic sexually debasing material that's put out on these search engines, you are ultimately responsible. Yeah, that is, I think, the essential core of the problem that we have in our country. You know, we have racism, we have sexism, we have all those massage, you have all those things. But at the root of the problem is that no one's responsible, that there's an indifference that people believe they can buy their way out of anything. So if they have a scandal with talc, as they do with Johnson and Johnson, when they have a scandal like they did with Purdue pharma, with the opioids, when they have a scandal with stuff that's put out on search engines, that that is that is harmful to pretty much everybody that sees it. You go to jail? Yeah. That's very simple. It's your responsibility. And it's absolutely ludicrous to me, when they say that they cannot regulate this stuff. Because they sure can regulators, they sure can regulate it, and they can, they can do something to protect, to protect people who need protection.

Unknown Speaker 23:17
Yeah, their citizens, their citizens

Speaker 2 23:19
easy. This is the thing about it. This is the thing about it. And I think, I think, you know, it's interesting now that, you know, there's this whole discussion about what's going on in the college campuses. And, you know, you know, that all the demonstrations and everything like that. Now, all of a sudden, they're frightened of people who were speaking out, because the students face and for the most part, except, except really, for Vietnam, or everybody was protesting. The students are always pretty docile. labile. Yeah, once into classes, but now there's issues. Now there's issues that they feel that are affecting them. They don't agree with the policy of the government demonstrations and protests should be encouraged. Yeah. Because that's the purpose of it's the purpose of being in democracy. Now, in the context of the university in the context of university. There's a protocol that has to be followed also, though, and in other words, you have the right to free speech, you have the right to, you know, say whatever you want to say, Yeah, but those rights come with obligations and responsibilities. You can't be you can't be threatening. You can't be threatening fellow students.

Speaker 3 24:39
Yeah, you can't straight up like punch someone in the face. Like that's, like violence, ya know,

Speaker 2 24:44
or in some places where they were putting swastikas. Oh, yeah. And dormitories. Yeah. Or in another case where they was fraud. They were I guess, spraying and this was a couple of weeks ago. And this was a Columbia University, which is kind of shocking because that was always considered such a great Ways there were spraying people who were supporting the Palestinian cause with some kind of chemical. And they had to go to the hospital because he got sick. I mean, that's, that's that's what's wrong. It's not it's not people. It's not people, you know, expressing their opinion. It's this extremism. Yeah. And what we've done in this country, unfortunately, is the politics are so, so divided and so screwed up, that you can't have a normal civil disagreement with somebody. Yeah. If somebody doesn't agree with you on who to vote for. They're your

Unknown Speaker 25:36
enemy. It goes zero to 100. Yeah,

Speaker 2 25:39
but they're not your enemy. It's just that they prefer to vote for this other person. Yeah, they haven't done anything to you. They haven't gotten into your house and stolen something from you. It's they have a different political opinion. Yeah, but we need. And I've said, I've said this in class, and I've said it outside of class, I think what we need to do is have a new constitutional convention, where we all get together. It could be in Philadelphia, maybe it could be somewhere else. That'd be cool. For a month for a month or two of people from every cross section, walk of life way of life, religion, gender, whatever it is, bring everybody together, and maybe a couple 100 people have it in a in a collegial setting. But have the people talk out what their differences are? And that would, that would be great. And in a few ways. First of all, it would it would get everybody to know exactly what other people are thinking. Yeah, but also to sit down in an amiable atmosphere, to hear what other people really think, now when people tell you what they think, but what they really think what they say. And the other thing I would have is I would have people dorm together. So you could have two people. One could be Magga, one could be liberal, one could be conservative, one could be Democrat, and they will roomed together, and they're there for a month or two. Almost like being on an almost like being on a jury in a sense. But the legal aspect of it, the moral aspect to democratic aspect of it would be one of those things we need to fix in our country. What can we do as a unified people? Yeah, because we're not a unified people. Now, what's a we need to do is unify people, and we bring everybody together, we bring everybody together, and everybody sits down. And you you get to know the other person, you got to know their philosophy. Because we're everything, everything is separated, though. We have all these groups in the country. Everybody's in their own silo. And they don't want to hear what anybody else is saying. But now they're forced to hear it. Yeah. So it's, and if you did that, I think you'd get something very positive. No, I agree. I truly do. You know, I mean, because what's going on now? It's not working.

Speaker 3 28:07
Yeah. Like it's not United States of America. It's really separated United or separated States of America. Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:13
I mean, you see this thing down in Texas, where the governor is claiming that the protection of the border is not held by the federal government. Yeah, it's the state in which is wrong that the government is our government is in charge of protecting the water. Yeah, our federal government, not the state. So you know, but anyway, but these are just some, these are some thoughts we throw out there every week, because we definitely need people to really give some thought to what's going on in our country because we want to make our country better. We want to make our country more the epitome of, you know, all the ideals that you know, we entrusted with and uphold. So it's been as always a great pleasure to speak with you this evening. And we look forward to talking to you again next week. Thanks

Unknown Speaker 29:08
for listening.

Unknown Speaker 29:10
Good night. Good

Speaker 3 29:10
night. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is t a M, G, one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin charles.stanton@unlv.edu. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai