Interview with Dr. Anthony M. D’Agostino, author of Prejudice, Racism, and Tribalism: A Primer for White People

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
A lot of words may describe our guest today, doctor, author, hero,
but the one thing that stands out is faithful. He
served as a Navy psychiatrist assigned to the US Marine
Corps during the Vietnam War. He's been married to the
same woman for fifty five years. He took on a
monster of a task in writing this book. Please give
a warm, counterculturalized welcome to author of prejudice, racism and

(00:36):
Tribalism of Primer for White People, Doctor Anthony M.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
De Augustino.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Welcome, Happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Good.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So we always start by asking where can our listeners
find you online?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
You know, I do have a website. It's Anthony Deugustino
MD dot com. No apostrophe in that one. I apostrophe
screw up everything somehow I have to eliminate that. But
Anthony Degasino MD dot com. I have a Facebook page,

(01:20):
Facebook author page Anthony Anthony M. D Augustino, m D.
It's got a lot of hate mail on it because
a lot of people don't but I but I think
it's instructive anyway. But a lot of people don't like
the title of my book for some reason. Uh, and
so they feel offended. Also have a podcast by the way,

(01:42):
uh on Spotify and iHeart and places like that. It's
same title, same title as the book. It's about the book.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
That's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay, Well, as we like to say, let's start from
the beginning, let's get a little bit of background. Uh,
we'll lead up to the books in a little bit.
But would you give our audience some background about growing
up in Chicago, your education, work experience, and all of that.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, I was born and raised in Chicago. I am
you know. I'm born in an Italian Catholic family in
an area called Little Italy in Chicago, in which I
don't think anybody wasn't Italian who lived there. I grew
up thinking segregation was good. You could because that's what
you know, normal people did. I went to an all

(02:32):
boys Catholic high school. We had sixteen hundred students in
our high school.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
That's pretty sizable back in the day.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, Chicago has an enormous that's probably New York too,
an enormous Catholic school system. So every from I went
to a public kindergarten and everything else was the Catholic schools,
including university and to a public medical I went to
University of Illinois Medical School, which happened to be about

(03:04):
a mile down the road from where I lived.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Oh that's convenient.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
I mean when I when I was born.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Okay, well, fantastic. So you you wound up working at
Cook County Hospital, and I mean, I'm not going to
give too much of the book away, because I want
people to actually get the book, of course, but that
was a that seemed like a harrowing experience in my mind.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
We're working there.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
It was a harrowing experience. It was a huge place,
you know, two thousand beds spread out over you know,
you know, many blocks in the Chicago neighborhoods. I talk
about that in my in the chapter called entitled How
I Became a Republican. And I became a Republican early

(03:58):
in life for reasons. One is, I roomed in college
next to the president of the Young Republicans in our school,
and so you know, I joined their group because I
lived next door to them, and but I never went
to a meeting, had no idea what they were up to.
And then at Cook County Hospital, I got an example

(04:21):
of what what you know, the political control of public institutions.
It is like at uh. And since I in Chicago
there were no Republicans when I grew up, I decided

(04:41):
I would become a Republican because because it wasn't a
Democrat you know, yeah we uh it's it was a
good example of what a you know, political machine was
like running a county house hospital, and I describe it
in the book, and I was not oppressed at all.

(05:06):
I then went out to Los Angeles County Hospital, which
was a totally different experience. Sure it was you know,
county run, but had none of the political I mean,
at least nothing. I was aware of, none of political
sort of attitudes about working there, and it was a

(05:29):
totally different experience, a much more positive experience, much less here.
It was a big place, it was two thousand bads.
In fact, when I was there, the Watts Riots if
you recall nineteen sixty five, the summer of sixty five,
the Watts Riots, and it was really a happening place,
you know during that time, a lot of gunshot wounds

(05:51):
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
I was blissfully unaware because I was born in Los
Angeles and I don't remember which hospital, but I was
blissfully unaware.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Of all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Going on, right, Well, Vietnam was just a word I
heard on on the on the TV Walter Kronkait every night.
I didn't have any concept of what was going on.
So but I went through playing my own stuff. Of
course we all do. So you wound up choosing psychiatry
as your profession. Very very versatile and very what's the

(06:27):
word I'm looking for. It's a very useful, useful profession. Yeah,
and I think that you eventually went you joined the Navy.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
You were assigned to.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Marines during the Vietnam War. Can you give us some
insight as to what that was about.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Well, as I mentioned in the book, I mean, I
did not serve in Vietnam. I I had a very
nice situation where I spent two years in San Diego.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
But that's right, San Diego, My apologies.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Right, But it was actually a training base MCRD in
San Diego in which people who just came from civilian
life would be dumped, and I had the marine experience. Yeah, yeah,
it was pretty interesting, especially then because as just as

(07:26):
I went into the military in July of nineteen sixty nine,
the Marine Corps got cut off from the draft and
things are not going well in Vietnam during the Tet
Offensive was sixty eight sixty nine. There was lots of

(07:47):
anti war protests going on in the country, so it
was very unpopular to be in the military at that time.
Some of my I pointed out that one of my
friends was in the Army, another psychiatrist from the program
that I trained at, and they were he was in

(08:08):
Vietnam and actually, you know, he kind of liked it.
They're oddly enough, but but when he got back and
was stationed at Fort ord Up in northern California, he
couldn't go off the base with his uniform on, right.
People would attack him.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
There was a lot of sanctimonious feeling about things at
the time. So I did right right in there about
you know, our experiences. San Diego was a it was
actually kind of a pleasant place to be and you know,
the Marine Corps and the Navy were well represented, both
by active duty people as well as retirees, so it

(08:51):
was friendly. But but outside of San Diego County, he
could get a little rough if you were in the
military at that time in.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
His especially in California.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Especially especially in California. Yes, yeah, so I wrote about
some of.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
That Yes, it's very well, very well written. I got
to say this book in it in general is I
really enjoyed it. So let's go ahead and get into
the book. What inspired you to take on this subject.

(09:26):
It's quite a wide ranging subject and very controversial still
maybe even more so now today than before.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, I think it's really hard to say. I think
to some extent, the first election, in the twenty sixteen
election of Donald Trump, sort of inspired me. And I said, well,
you Knowle's this is sort of an interesting phenomenon. I
think we need to take a look at it. Sure,
So I just I think the phenomenon just inspired me

(09:59):
to take a look. Look. The other thing is, you know,
I was kind of upset about the fact that, you know,
we're banning books, and that librarians and teachers were kind
of getting into trouble for teaching American history. Sure, and
I grew up in an era where you know, when
I grew up, I was born in the early forties,

(10:21):
and when I grew up in the early fifties, and
there was a lot of the Communism was a big scare,
and everybody was all the communists and the government were
being sought out, and you know, eliminated, and there was
a and yet I never nobody ever said you can't
read dos capital right. In fact, when I went to school,

(10:48):
and I went to Catholic schools mostly, but they didn't
seem to have any problem talking about you know, communist
theory at least, and it was not well well thought of,
but but it was we were allowed to.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Talk about, right.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
There wasn't any kind there was no public outcry against
talking especially in universities and schools. These were, you know,
appropriate places to talk about things like that. And now
there they've sort of become like we shouldn't talk about
things like, you know, racism or critical race theories and

(11:27):
other things that got me into I tried to. I
can't think of any place where anybody was teaching it.
I can't remember being thought. I can't remember anything. But
there was such a thing, and they were allowed to
be talked about at universities. And I even heard a
news item at one point where in Texas universities, at

(11:50):
the university level, in state universities, they were thinking of
banning such talk. I mean, I can't imagine why anybody
at a university would want to ban anything.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Well, I mean that's the that that is the tradition
of universities. It's where thoughts are expressed openly and there's discussion.
My wife likes to say, the best place for a
bad idea is out in the light so people can
see it. And you know, if I think I think

(12:23):
it's important to be able.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I'm in.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
I'm a free speech advocate anyway, sure, but how else
are you going to form a worldview you don't want it?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And this this is.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Regardless of political leanings or whatever.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's a very bad idea.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
To try and shape people's minds through politics. It's it's
just that's my opinion. But I think that we need
to have open conversation. I mean, that's that's one of
the reasons that you wrote this. We need to have
an open conversation. Now, keeping in mind, you and I
are a couple of older white guys talking about this,

(13:05):
so it's not it may not be. It won't have
the same flavor as you talking to a black person.
It won't be the same if you talk to an
older black person versus.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
A younger one. You know, it's always going to be
a little bit different.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
So with that in mind, let's dig into this book
a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
The title is the subject it is.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
It is also and in fact, on social media, I
can get a lot of hate mail because of the subtitle,
you know, a primer for white people, And I get
the messages like, why don't you write a primer for
black people? You know, The answer, of course, is obvious.
I'm not a black person. I wrote the book as
if I was talking to friends of mine people know,

(13:54):
I mean, my family, my friends, my colleagues. I mean,
I talk to them as though they're white people, and
I'm having a conversation with them about these various things.
And a lot of my friends, you know, I disagree
with some of the things I say in the book. Sure,
it's fine, I don't. I don't have any problem with that.

(14:19):
I don't. The other thing is the title of the
book implies that somehow everybody knows what I'm writing about,
and so some of the criticisms I've got online are
you know, I know, I don't have to read your
book because I know what you're going to say, so
and I don't have to listen to your podcast because
I know what you're going to say.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
And my feeling is, no, you don't no, you don't,
because you know, you go into it's helpful to go
into books like this with an open mind and not say, oh,
I know what you're going to say, and you know,
let me give you an example. I consider myself rather conservative. However,

(15:01):
I also work for the State of Texas and the
department that hands out food stamps and medicaid, and I'm
a member of their labor union. I don't exactly fit
into any particular you know, any particular definition, is what
I'm saying. And you know, if I make a statement

(15:21):
about something that doesn't you can't. You can't figure a
person out completely just by one or two things you say,
or even by an entire book. You're a multifaceted person.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
You don't. We don't most of us anyway. Aren't that
narrow or that shallow? You know?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
And I didn't, you know, I felt like, you know,
this was getting older. It is my sort of last
chance to sort of sit down and say what I
think about a number of different issues. Talking about this
particular kind of issue is kind of risky in many ways, because,

(16:00):
like I say, people will get worked up pretty intensely
by the title without listening to what I have to say.
But anyway, be that as it may. I like to
do this and I enjoyed doing it, and it forced
me to think about what I think. Sure, I think
about these various things.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
That's it's They're important subjects. So one of the things
I do like about the book is that you draw distinctions.
Because my wife and I we we we host a podcast,
as you know, and we do talk politics a bit,
and as a joke, we decided to do a fake

(16:41):
game show called is This Racist? And Melanie would read
different articles to me saying this is is this racist?

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Or not? I mean?

Speaker 1 (16:48):
And it turns out there are college professors, for example,
they will say everything from literally doctor Tony Rice, Crispy's trafficsgals,
math class, it's racist for some reason or another. And
it gets to be a point where, like I said earlier,
it's like a punchline. It doesn't it's lost its meaning entirely.

(17:12):
And how can you have a conversation about something as
important as this.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
When nobody when the word has been beaten to death.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Right, So.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Let's go over these one by one prejudice.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Let's let's get your takes on all three of these,
just like a thumbnail of all three of these.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Well, you know prejudices. Every everyone has prejudices. You do not.
A person does not exist in the world that does
not have prejudices. The question is the trick is to
figure out which ones you have and which ones you
don't have. That's part. But the reality is we all
have that. We're trained. In fact, I use examples like

(17:59):
speaking English, does that give us a prejudice? Well, yes,
it does, because we we think in terms of English things,
We think in terms of English history, we think in
terms like if we were born in a Spanish speaking
South American country, we might get a different slant on

(18:22):
life only because we read Spanish and people are writing
in Spanish. So you just cannot help but get a
different view of life based on where you're from. I
was born, you know, around the time of World War two,
and I can remember, you know, my whole life that

(18:44):
I can remember, at least of the time was you know,
the English speaking people were fighting against bad people, you know,
the Germans and the Japanese and even the Italians for
a while, so you have a different view. Right after

(19:05):
the war, there were people, lots of refugees coming to
the United States, These were called dps displaced persons, right,
and we sort of looked down upon them. They spoke
a different language. So I mean, the good guys were
the British, the Australians, the Americans, and the good guys

(19:26):
were the Russians until the war ended. Then the Russians
became the vaguys. But it's really it was really who
was fighting World War two is mostly English speaking people
and Russian speaking people in German and then Japanese speaking people,
and these guys were all bad. So you get a
you can't grow up in a war of and this

(19:48):
was a war of you know, of to the death basically,
and you can't grow up in that kind of a
world without having highly prejudicial views, which after the war,
you know, are modified somewhat. But you have to appreciate
that I grew up in a totally Catholic world. I

(20:09):
didn't know anyone. I went to school with only people
who were Catholic. I went to high school with only
people who are casting I went to college only with
people I didn't know any Protestants, basically because this was
the world I lived in. So you I married a

(20:31):
Protestant woman who went to had the exact same education
as I did, except it was all Lutheran or so
you have to begin to understand you've got to bend
your perspectives a little just growing up. So I talk
a lot about prejudice as not related to race in

(20:55):
the first chapter, and I talk about prejudic this in
the courtroom. I happen to be in a resident in
the u c l a UH right around the time
that UH Sir Hans Sir Hahn killed Bobby Kennedy, and

(21:15):
and so I went to a program that the conducted,
and I was interested in the in the in the
lawyers who really saw prejudice as natural to human life
and something to be exploited. Actually, for a good lawyer,

(21:36):
you don't you don't necessarily try to eliminate prejudice. What
you try to do is you try to get it
on your side. And the whole issue of jury selection
and legal representation, it's all about exploiting prejudice. And if
you're a good lawyer, you do it better than a

(21:57):
bad lawyer. So it's just a natural part of life.
In racism, I felt again I felt the term is overused.
Everybody's a racist. You know, black people are calling white
people racist. White people are calling black people racist, right,

(22:20):
you know, brown people are calling white people racist. I mean,
it just becomes meaningless after a time. So I tried
to take pains and define it as a thing, a
particular thing. And again, I'm not saying I have the
last word. I'm only saying that if you define it,
if you define it more clearly, they all agree to

(22:43):
use it. In this way, we at least know what
we're talking about exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
This, This is the entire crux of the book, as
far as I'm personally concerned. But on page thirty four
of your book, you're quoting isom Uluo.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
I hope I got her name right or there.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
I can't pronounce your name either.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
It's cause so you want to talk about race. Gives
two different definitions of racism. The second one is really
what drives you and what Actually that's what hit home
for me. So would you be kind enough to give
our audience a little bit more about that.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Well, in that particular definition, which I arbitrarily chose, that
is what I like. I think it's it's where you're
prejudiced against somebody because of their race. But the racism
part is when you use instruments of power.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
To you so simply.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
And I use the example of the Nation of Islam,
which is a Chicago institution by the way, right right,
black Muslims, And I say, they, you know, they've got
these wildly bizarre theories about white people and their devils,
and they came from a different the rest. So but

(24:01):
I thought it was amusing. It's just that it doesn't
it doesn't impact me. They haven't impacted me in a
way that matters. So they merely have bad opinions about
white people, merely bad opinions. When you have merely bad opinions,

(24:23):
you don't really do anybody any real harm. When you
have when you control their schools, or you control their workplace,
or you control their government, or you control the laws
that influence them, that's power. That's real. Well, the rest
of it is just, you know, we all hate one

(24:45):
another at some point. I guess I'm too accepting of
that human quality, but I I just have you know,
I grew up in the city. People are always, you know,
yelling at one another, You're complaining about one the saying
bad names about one another, you know, calling each other name.
So it was sort of like what else is new,

(25:08):
tell me what really matters, and and that's how I
define racism. Uh, race and racism in the backs of
NFL football helmets is meaningless.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
It means, it.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Means that we should all love one another, and we
all smile and say, well, it will never happen, but
it's a nice sentiments.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
It's the Christian ideal.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
God tells us to love each other, and on some
level we want to.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Do that, but.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
We need more than that, really, right, And sloganeering doesn't
really do.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
All right, Right, So and I feel like, let's define
what this is and then we'll understand it better. We
can talk about it the other The tribalism, I think,
is again another human and instinct. I think that if
you look at the history of humankind, you know, going
back as far as we can possibly I find it,

(26:11):
probably even before hormos apiens, probably even in Neanderthal you
see that tribalism is an important human instinct. It's a
it's a social instinct. It's a self preserved, preserving kind
of instinct. And we probably have it because in these

(26:33):
several million years of hominid evolution, we just it would
turn out be useful somehow, So we're not going to
totally get rid of that. We have to find a
way to live with it. But you can't really eliminate
it totally. And I, you know, I you know, I

(26:54):
sort of think, you know, Trump is a good example
of somebody who who's kind of masterful at that sort
of instinctual thing, and you've got to give him credit.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
We will talk more about him later in the light
of the election results.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Certainly, I happen to agree with you.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
I think I think tribalism is something that it's just it.
It's organic, it's almost organic, because we need to feel
like we belong, and if we know, if we're with
enough people it's usually our families in our immediate community
to start with. We need to feel like we belong.

(27:35):
We're not solitary creatures. Sometimes we want to be, but
that's just not reality. So I appreciate the fact that
you took the effort to separate the three of them
and define each one.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I think it's very, very important.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
And also in this book, you give a lot of
historical context and examples of all three of these. Would
you like to give us a few examples of historical
examples of this and how it pertains today.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
Well, I mean historically, you know, I mean, if you
look at the last fifty years, I mean you get
kind of confused. But if you look at the last
five thousand years, you'll see that people tend to they
tend to value people like them more than they value

(28:31):
people who are not like them. So, if you're going
to live in a world where a lot of people
are not like you, you're going to have to develop
a new kind of skill. Probably so. And I think
we all live in a I think the human beings
are we sort of have a sense of safety when

(28:55):
things are predictable and when there are people that we know.
It's like when you walk, when you meet somebody in
let's say you're in Africa and you meet somebody who
went to high school with or you meet somebody that
went to your high school. You'll never see that person again,
but you feel a certain connections, there's a kinship, there's

(29:18):
a feeling of relatedness that exists beyond and you'll never
see the person again, and you never saw the person before,
and yet you feel a certain kind of closeness. This
is instinctual, you know, in human beings. Historically, I'm not
sure what you mean, but I mean, there's so many

(29:40):
different historical things that I use in the book, but
one of the things that I talk about is the
I think I think white people don't know how to
respond to to history in some ways. And the problem

(30:05):
is that for the last five hundred years, white people
have outperformed most other people. Technologically, they are they have
been more superior. They have you know, developed science they have.
So when when you know, Cortes came to conquer you know,

(30:28):
Aztec America, there was no thought about, you know, geez,
should I be doing this? Is this a nice neighborly
thing to do? No, he was a conqueror, his conquer
the people. But that's not another That's not an unheard
of thing in humanity. And this in fact, the Spanish,

(30:49):
you know, who conquered you know, Central America and South America. Uh,
they just came off seven hundred years of being conquered
by the North Africans, right, So we're don't understand is
that the dominant language in the Iberian Peninsula for like
five hundred years, which is the amount of time that

(31:12):
white people have been in the America. It's five hundred
years the dominant language. There was Arabic for five hundred years.
So it's you know, whether you like it or not,
this is the way people do things. And you have
to you know, if you understand human history, you understand that,
you know, people don't always don't always behave like you know,

(31:37):
the Jesus Sermon on the mount type of thing. That's
how people are. So you have to learn to live
with that. And I use as an example. One of
the examples I use in the book is is a
Melissa Via signor. She was a performer on Saturday Night

(31:59):
Live Right. And there's a program that I always watch.
It's called Finding your Roots, you know, by Henry Lewis Gates.
It's on PBS Tuesday nights in Chicago and never miss it,
never miss it. But they had her on one time,
and it turns out that she I use her as

(32:20):
an example of how white people respond to historical things,
sometimes inappropriately, right, And it turns out that her twelfth
great grandfather, twelfth great grandfather goes back five hundred years.
He was one of the conquista doors that with Cortes,

(32:48):
and so just watching her as you know, if you're
familiar with Gates' style. What he does is he, you know,
l they do a marvelous job of finding you know,
your relatives going back, and they were able to find
hers going back five hundred years. And just as she's

(33:09):
listening to the story, her face, her facial emotions in
her face go up and down according to what part
of the stories she was listening to. And I try
to talk for example, she was He said, oh, you know,
your twelfth great grandfather was a Basque nobleman. Oh, hell no,

(33:35):
I'm a bad She didn't even know that. She goes,
you know, I'm a basque, you know whatever that means.
And he said, of course, he was one of the
conquista doors that came over with Cortes and conquered the people.
And then she looks sad, you know, and then she
feels like guilty. And then he says, well, we've examined
your genome and you're twenty five percent indigenous, and she

(34:01):
smiles and she said, oh, I'm indigenous. Isn't that nice?
And then she says you're two percent West African and
she smiles and says, oh, gee, I'm two percent West Africa.
How nice? And then he says, well, of course that
means that one of your twelve great grandfathers probably had
a slave and a black slave. And she, you know,

(34:24):
looks upset again, and she got so upset that he
has to rescue her, right, so upset that he he
has to jump in and say, but that's that's on them,
not on you, you know, like it's I mean, this
is human history, you know, folks, this is what life
has been like for thousands of years. There's really no

(34:48):
reason for her to react that way, but you know,
this is how she reacts.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
She feels very connected to their past.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Now me, I was adopted, so my family tree is
really kind of about this big.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
So you know, well, you know, my family tree begins
when my grandparents got here in nineteen oh eight, nineteen
oh nine, right, and that's it. I mean, I have
absolutely no awareness beyond that, and I don't exactly see
how that's relevant either.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Most it mostly isn't It isn't right because some people
treat it with such importance, you know, and so you know,
I tend to respect that, but at the same time,
I'm on I'm with you on that that It's just
I'm not responsible for what my dad did. Let alone
what my great great great grandfather did.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
And I put in the book. You know, I've got
an uncle went to prison, you know, for selling heroin,
and another uncle who was in the Federal witness protection program.
So I mean, I still never understood what that had
to do with me. It doesn't really. And also, if
you take somebody like Vias and you are and you

(36:07):
go back, you know, to twelve great grandfathers, she's got
about as much DNA from that grandfather in her as
she has neander Tal DNA. Right. Europeans, by the way,
have about two percent Neanderthal genes, most Europeans. So so
she's got as much DNA from this conquista to our

(36:30):
grandfather as she's kind of you know, Neanderthals. So what
does that mean? Nothing?

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, it doesn't mean much, doesn't mean much.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, I try to, you know, take a let's take
a look at that and let's see if we're let's
see how guilty should we feel. And my conclusion is
not very guilty about what happens today.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
Right, And that's all we can do really is monitor
ourselves or ask our friends and loved one is okay,
am I am I racist? What am I doing that
might be racist, and what can I do to make
it right to anybody have offended or hurt a lot

(37:12):
of Basically, what the racism that you're talking about is
what is often called systemic racism or institutional racism, as
opposed to prejudice or tribalism. Like I said before, I
don't think it is as bad as it as it
once might have been. Once again, that doesn't mean, hey,

(37:36):
it's better now when we walk away and don't do
anything about it, right.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Right, right, Yeah. My point in the book was simply
to talk about the way things are now and to
not to you know, make any other kind of message.
I use an example of of the the Black Psychologist,

(38:06):
remember that one where she's on a plane or she's
well when she's twelve years old, and as an example
of you know, prejudice that might be inborn in human beings.
She's twelve years old, she's in an all black neighborhood.
Everybody and she knows is white, the teachers, the grosses,

(38:27):
and everybody. And then she moves to a more white neighborhood.
And remember the names of the white girls in her
class because they all look.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Alike, right, right, And what is one of our big
prejudices as white people, you know, or sometimes as a
mean joke, but they all look aike, well they don't, but.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Of course not. But but but she's she's a good
example of how that this is kind of a human
thing when something is different and we key on that
feature and we don't key on other features. Right, when
something is familiar, we don't you know, we don't keying
on skin color, we keying on other aspects. It's just

(39:12):
a human characteristic.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
When she's on the plane with her son, and her
son looks over at the only black man on the
plane and says, he out a plane, Mama, she feels like,
you know, she's he's like a dagger into her heart.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
But I could I can't even imagine what that must
have felt like.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Right, right, Yeah, But her son, who's five years old,
is saying, there's a black man, is he a criminal?

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Right?

Speaker 3 (39:44):
So that's that's that's that's what I try to say
as well, if if you ever hear the word systemic,
that's that's an example of suspects.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's it's a very sad and very good example. Absolutely.
So let's talk about modern times because we've been We've
been talking mostly about the historical context of these concepts,
but right now we're living in a world where we
have one side saying black lives matter, the other saying

(40:18):
all side, you know, all everybody matters. And so both
of them walk away after saying that to each other.
Nothing gets accomplished, and they're both frustrated and angry and
maybe maybe just feeling that they're just digging in deeper
in their own belief systems.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
So what do you see is some of.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
The some of the elements that we can look at
and maybe find some common common ground in working on fixing.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Well, you know, you know, I must admit that it
was not my purpose to fix society by writing work.
It was an attempt to educate people I know and
my friends to what the terms are and why we
use them. But again, I think most white folks that

(41:11):
I know, well, I mean, I know a lot of
you know, fairly, you know, intelligent white folks, and I
can't speak for all of them, but I say a
lot of people they feel very offended when somebody say
black lives matter. For some reason, a lot of us
white people are offended by that statement. And all lives

(41:35):
matter is a way of sort of undermining whatever that wins,
and so I the purpose of the book is to
stop and say, well, let's look at what these things
really mean, rather than you know, responding in our sort
of prejudicial, visceral way of Oh, I am becoming angry

(42:00):
every time we hear somebody say something like that. It's
obviously Black Lives Matter is supposed to indicate that a
lot of they think they think a lot of us
white folks don't think black lives matter. I mean, that's
that's the issue point, right, It isn't. It isn't somehow

(42:21):
like we're trying to take over the world or anything
like that. And you know, why do we find that offensive?

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Right as if saying black lives matter means white lives don't.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Right, you know, or or or it's some kind I
don't know. I mean, I I don't know, because when
I the Black Lives Matter thing came out of the
fact that, you know, many black people think that we
white folks think it's okay to kill people if they're black,

(42:54):
or it's okay for a policemen to kill them if
they're black. And I, you know, I can't speak for
policemen and I'm not going to castigate in the book.
I don't castigate policemen for acting the way they do.
I don't know what I would do if I was
a cop in some of these neighborhoods. But I just say,

(43:16):
let's stop and think about why these folks. Maybe they're wrong,
but they think that we don't mind them getting shot
and killed. So I simply raise that issue, and I
talk about what I think they mean by these things
in my attempt, since it's for white people I'm writing

(43:39):
the book, and my interpretation of what that means. And
then I sort of asked the question, you know, why
are we offended, you know by these things. On the
other hand, you know, nobody likes to be robbed, nobody
likes to be carjacked, nobody likes to be and and

(44:00):
then it is true that, you know, higher percentages of
I'll say poor people are involved in crime. When my
people came here back in nineteen ten, in nineteen oh nine,
I mean there were more of us involved in crimes
in the street, probably, and there were people who were

(44:22):
more affluent. Of course, that's what happens with, you know,
people who are relatively poor. So you're going to get
more crime among black people because of their socioeconomic There's
not more crime among middle class back black people than
there are amount middle class white people or middle class Asians.

(44:43):
There isn't there's more crime among poor white people than
there is amount affluent white people. I mean part of
And I think the history of separation and racism and
all that in the past has probably you know, has
its mark, has its sign. So you're not going to

(45:08):
but I think white people take these things too personally.
They are personally offended, they are personally angered, they are
personally upset by these allegations, you know, like we're accused
of stuff, and you know, in many cases we are,

(45:29):
but you have to put the thing in context, you know.
I was I remember when I was a resident Los Angeles.
I was at a school one day and this was
the day of the Hong Kong Flu. I don't know
if you remember that, but it was in the late sixties.

(45:50):
There was something that was going around called the Hong
Kong Flu. And I was at a black school and
the black principal was upset about the term Hong Kong
flu because she thought we were ripping Chinese people the flu,
you know, much like Donald Trump calls it, yeah, China

(46:14):
or China, COVID, whatever it is. And she was offended
because we were using but Hong Kong flu. You know,
I have to tell it that it's called Hong Kong
fu because it was, it was identified in Hong Kong.
That's how you're right. It wasn't because you know, people
were prejudicing in Chinese people. So you get these kinds

(46:36):
of misconceptions, which are in some ways I guess natural,
because we have our prejudices that we bring the situations.
But that doesn't mean we have to like buy into
every single prejudice that comes.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Our way exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Anyhow, that's my thoughts on the matter.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
You several times in the book, let's talk about Donald Trump.
Several times in the book, you're referring to his administration
as symptomatic of white supremacy in America. Well, since this
book's been written, since we agreed to do this interview,

(47:25):
we all know what happened.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
On November fifth. He won. You know, I never used
the word landslide.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
It was a decisive win and there were reports polls.
I don't know if you believe the polls that a
significantly larger number of black men voted for Trump that
are voted Republican. Let's put it that way then, before,
what do you make of this?

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Well, I mean, I'm not a political analyst, you know,
I don't necessarily you know, I can't speak for things.
I do feel that his victory both the first time
and the second time were in effect reflections of a

(48:14):
certain enthusiasm about some aspect of him. In other words,
I don't think somebody says, well, it was the inflation,
well yeah, but I don't think so, well it was this,
Well it was that. I think what what I think
he understands more than most people is that sixty five

(48:39):
percent of the electorate is.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
White, right, that's true, That.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Twelve percent of the electorate is black, thirteen percent of
the electorate is Hispanic. So by the electorate, I mean
the people who actually vote.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Right, right.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
So, and I think this was the first time and
the second time. I think that I think white people
feel that he has their interest in mind, that he
is not going to blame them for history. For example,
I was told, and I didn't count them, but I

(49:26):
was told that there were thirty thousand ads that were
run paid for by Musk about this transgender person who
was in the California prison system that Aamila Harris facilitated
is getting a sex change operation for I don't know

(49:49):
if you saw.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
That, No, did I missed that one entirely.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Well, okay, And apparently they were shown in during football
games and during the World Series, you know, quite a
few times, so there was an emphasis on that. So
I think it always puzzled me that, let's and so

(50:15):
it motivated me to look up, you know what percentage
of the adult population in America identifies as transgender? Sure,
it turns out to be one point one four percent.
So I was wondering why thirty thousand ads about this

(50:36):
transgender thing were supposedly aired during the last few weeks
of the election, why that was so important? So again,
you know, my belief is that you focus on the

(50:59):
things that you identify with most people. I mean, by definition,
most people don't like LGBTQ people. They simply don't like them.
I mean, most people in the world don't like them.
So why you know, so Joe Biden gets insulin down

(51:20):
to thirty five dollars a month for at least Medicare recipients. Sure,
sure people in the United States use incidence eleven percent
of the population. Eleven percent is going between seven hundred
and one thousand dollars a month. Okay, so you wonder

(51:41):
why people don't care about that and they care about
this prisoner in this who you know, I'm sure you know,
like it's as if we're all going to be, you know,
transformed into transsexuals if we elect the camera, whatever it is.

(52:02):
There's a certain tribal instinct that we respond to when
we see those things. And I think you did it
very well. I mean, I'm I'm giving them, I'm giving
them a compliment, really, yea, because there are very few
people that understand that kind of tribal instinctual urge. I mean,

(52:26):
do you vote for the guy who is okay with
this with somebody going from a male to a female,
or do you you know, I mean you don't you
vote for the guy that you know is for the
AR and make sure you get an AR fifteen that
you know doesn't like transgender people, doesn't like all these

(52:50):
queer people. So if you can get people to identify
with your view as opposed to the other person's view.
But I think, I think, yeah, I think Donald Comes
victory is the victory of white people over the rest
of the country. I think it's their victory. White people

(53:10):
are gonna win out in the end. And this is
an example what says or does.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah, do you see that changing at all with the
shifting And I mean it is what it is for
the moment, but in the future, as we're seeing the
demographics shift in some ways rather drastically towards non wasps,

(53:42):
if you will, and the people who are not white
Christian evangelical types. Now I'm white, I'm evangelical, and I'm Christian, right,
I don't I.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Personally don't feel threatened by all this. But when the
you know, twenty years from now.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Do you think that this is going to change at all?

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Well, I think yes, some of it will will change,
because it always changes.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Right.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
The there's there's this sort and I think in the
book I talk about sort of the Hegelian sort of
model of social change. You know, you have you have
the thesis, and then you have something that's antithesis. It
already has has changed. For example, in the nineteen seventies

(54:34):
you were probably just born around then, but I remember
there there's anita but Bryant. Anita Bryant had this save
save the children. She's going to protect the children from
all these homosexuals. We're going to be busy transforming all
the children.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
You remember her. I do remember her, and I thought
she was backstead right.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
So she said homosexuals don't breed, they recruit. They agreed,
they were proved. Now, a few years ago, the city
of Chicago elected a black homosexual mayor who was married
to another woman. Sure, it was not an issue in

(55:14):
the campaign, it was not an issue during her administration.
She had plenty of problems, but that wasn't one of them.
So if you'd have told me fifty years ago that
we were going to elect a homosexual mayor who was
married to another woman, I would have thought you were nuts.

(55:34):
So these changes do occur over time, and I'm not
saying they necessarily occur in the more liberal direction either.
I mean, I was a registered Republican up until twenty sixteen,
so you know, traditional Republican views are not, you know,
abhorrent to me. But I think, you know, I think

(56:00):
out of white people in the country feel like we're
on the verge of some kind of terrible thing. I
heard you know, evangelical preachers say that, you know, God
wanted Trump to be president, and that God was you know,
was active in in in this race. And so I

(56:20):
think there's a feeling like we've gotta we've got to
save ourselves now. But you know, I'm a I'm a physician.
I've worked most of my life in a world where
a lot of the physicians are not white people, and
they seem to be pretty much like me as as
I can.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Yeah, well, doctor Tony, it might be hard to believe,
but we've been at this for about an hour now,
so we're gonna We're going to go ahead and.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Wrap this up shortly.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
But before we do, were there any last thoughts you
wanted to give our audience.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
No, I mean, I think if you read the book
or even listen to the podcast, I think you might
agree with me on some issues, and sure, even if
you're a fairly conservative.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Once again, I thought this was a fascinating book.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
I didn't agree with everything you wrote, of course, but
it opened my eyes, it opened my mind, and any
book that can do that.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Is a gift. It's a treasure.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Tell us one last time before we go where people
can find you.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Well, Anthony Dugostino MD dot com and I do have
a Facebook author page under my name. I'm not sophisticated
enough with social media and tell you how to find it.
Just now it's out there because people are sending me

(57:52):
all kinds of interesting opinions.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
So yeah, you just set yourself up in a way
when you write a book like this that people are
gonna pre judge, show prejudice.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Who knew?

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Okay, well, doctor di Agustino, it's been a pleasure talking
to you. I enjoyed this conversation very much. And as
my wife said, we will have this up soon.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
We will let you know.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
There will be links to your Amazon page of course,
so that you can people who are interested can check
this book out.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Thank you so.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Much, and I hope you have a great holiday you too.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it myself well

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Interview with Dr. Anthony M. D’Agostino, author of Prejudice, Racism, and Tribalism: A Primer for White People

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