st one was, and I'll just explain it to you so you don't see it. There was a video of a white guy dancing poorly in I think Times Square or something that looked like that. So this is a dumpy little white guy. He's dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld, sort of not too elegantly. And there was a Black influencer who retweeted that and added the note "White History Month." So the White History Month and this little nerdy white guy dancing like a nerd. And I thought to myself, okay, that was really funny. Yeah, this is funny. When I see a Black influencer making fun of white people for dancing poorly or if we're dancing inelegantly, to me that's just funny. So I had no negative, not a single negative feeling about that. It was just funny.

All right. Here's the brutal one. All right. I saw, maybe you've heard this before. This one's pretty brutal, right? So I'm not telling you this because of the joke or because I'm agreeing with it, right? I want to see where we are. I'm just testing the temperature. All right. So this one was on Twitter and wasn't banned on Twitter. It said Black, you've heard people say that the slaves and because and reparations is based on the fact that the slaves and Black Americans built America. You've heard that? No, of course that's hyperbole. But it is part of the argument for reparations is that Black Americans, specifically the slaves, built America. Well this joke sort of pushes back on that idea quite brutally and says Blacks built America like cows built McDonald's.

Okay, that's just funny. It's brutal. It's racist just like the other joke. You know, White History Month is just racist. But it's also funny. Are we at the point where we can laugh at that? Did anybody get hurt? Was anybody injured? Do you have a somehow lesser opinion of Black people because of this joke? I don't. Doesn't change anything about my real opinions in the real world. It's just clever. It's just funny.

So how do we get here? Like how do we do more of this? And again, certainly there would be racial jokes that are beyond the pale, right? But some of them are just silly and you know they're just clever. Could we not laugh about that? We couldn't have a good time together like Black and white and just still laugh at that? I feel like we could. And I feel like there's something that happened with the affirmative action ruling. Because the affirmative action ruling did something beyond change the precedent and the law. What it did was it educated the country of what was happening to Asian Americans. And I don't think people who don't follow Twitter and don't follow the news, I don't think they do. Do you? I mean I didn't know. I mean I knew there was a thing there. I knew it was bad. I had no idea how extreme it was. No idea until I saw the data. And then I said whoa, things have gone too far. That's just too far. And the Supreme Court agreed. They said that's too far.

But I feel like that somehow changed the way all of us are thinking about everything in terms of race. It changed everything about how you're thinking about everything but not in such an obvious way that you're maybe conscious of it. I think it just was just like a wake-up call. So it's just like a little slap in the face of the country. It's like wake up, wake up. You can't possibly think it's good to massively discriminate against Asian Americans. Wake up, wake up. Hey, hey, wake up. That can't be good. Wake up. Oh well. And like suddenly the country woke up at the same time and looked at that situation and said what? Well I don't want to live in a country where Asian Americans are just massively discriminated against for nothing except their ethnicity. Who wants to live in that country? Nobody. Literally nobody.

So I feel like that was like a wake-up call where people understood that good intentions can go too far. That's the one that solidified it. Because we live on stories. We don't live on concepts. The concept that things have gone too far didn't really solidify in your head. But once it's a story, you know it's the Asians getting into college story. Now it's a story so you'll remember that and it'll be influential forever.

So I think something changed. I think something changed. And I think that we're moving toward an understanding that Black Americans need more than anything strategy. Because the Asian American example, if you're racist you're going to say oh because they're smart, right? If you're racist you say oh the Asians are smart. That's why they do so well. Maybe they are. But you don't need that assumption. You could look at the strategy. You don't say culture. As soon as you say culture you get in trouble. That's why I say strategy. Look at the strategy. Stay out of jail. Stay off drugs. Study hard. Try to get a job that you know will pay well. Start a family. Stay married. Raise the kids. Get them into college. That's a strategy.

Are you telling me that Black Americans can't use that same strategy? Why? Because they started behind the ball or you know systemic racism that might make it harder. But unless you're doing those things, nobody wants to hear from you. I think that's the big, I think that's a big takeaway from the affirmative action ruling. Unless you're doing what the Asian Americans are doing the way they're doing it, we don't want to hear from you. Didn't that feel like exactly what you were thinking? If you can't do what the Asian Americans are doing, I don't even want to have a conversation. Honestly I'm just not interested anymore. If Black Americans were trying hard to do what the Asian Americans are doing, this working, and it wasn't working for Black Americans, then I'm completely engaged. Let's fix this. What's wrong here? Let's fix it. But if you're not doing the strategy that everybody knows works, everybody knows it, everybody knows it, if you're not trying to do that strategy, we don't want to hear from you. Don't make it my problem. Definitely not my problem.

So something has definitely changed. And I think some of it is positive. In other words, we're sort of framing the things as more of a strategy deficit. And once you prove that the Asian Americans basically all of them follow the same strategy and it worked, you know I'm exaggerating, it's not all of anybody, but it's undeniable, right? We've gotten to the point where you can't make an argument that the people who do the right things get bad outcomes. You just can't make that argument. It would sound ridiculous in 2023.

But I think in the past people made that argument that even if you're Black and you did everything right it still wouldn't work out for you. Does anybody believe that? Do any of you believe that if you're a Black American you do everything right, you know, stay out of jail, study hard, build a skill, unless you have terrible luck like you're the victim of a drive-by shooting or something, unless you have terrible luck, know every one of you expect that that would work. It would probably work really well. Not even a little bit. Just a lot. It works pretty much every time.

So there does seem to be some willingness, and I think the affirmative action thing caused it, a willingness to say get your strategy right or we can't even tell how much systemic racism is mattering. I take it as a given that systemic racism is a big variable. But how big? How big? I have no idea because I'm not in that situation. But if I looked at people whose strategy was solid, they're doing the right strategy and they're still not getting it done, then I would say whoa, whoa. Then you gotta look pretty hard at the systemic racism. But then you sized it, right? Then you know the size of it. Could also be something else. But unless you get the strategy the same, we don't want to hear from you.

All right. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my always risky but positive take on the world. And how much do you love that I have free speech? How much do you love it? How many of you would like to hear me read the Dilbert Reborn comic today? And now some of you pay for it. You're subscribers. So if you don't mind, I'm going to read this one. All right. So this will give you an idea what you're missing. Why can't I find it