John McWhorter: The Neoracists
persuasion.community
persuasion.community
It’s continually amusing to me that some of the most outwardly “anti-religious” people (I’m reminded of this Silicon Valley scene [1]) adopt belief systems and act in ways that are nearly indistinguishable from American Protestantism, with the minor difference of the content of beliefs being different. It makes sense, really: cultures don’t suddenly go 180 in the opposite direction. They adjust and build on already-established modes of thought. I think this is called the Horseshoe theory, but that’s usually applied to politics.
Look, as an American Catholic it's not unusual for me to encounter people who drastically stereotype Protestants, but literally the only thing that unites the quite diverse group encompassed by the term “American Protestantism” is the content of their beliefs systems, and at that a fairly small subset of the content.
Pretty much any thing you could imagine is “nearly indistinguishable from American Protestantism” but for the content of belief systems.
I should also make clear that I’m not casting any judgment on anything I’ve listed. In fact, I’d consider myself a fan of many of them. Just pointing out the similarities and the funny hypocrisy that sometimes appears by those who are very vocal in their criticism.
Puritanism obviously isn't particularly American (nor is it a thing anymore in any coherent, nonmetaphorical sense), Prosperity theology isn't broadly characteristic of American Protestantism (though, yes, it's origin is within American Protestantism and it is more common within American Protestantism than elsewhere; OTOH, many of it's fiercest opponents are also within American Protestantism)—and, moreover, it's a component of a belief system, not something that could be shared with another group outside of the content of beliefs—and Mormonism isn't a subset of Protestantism, or, at least by the shared definition used by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity, even strictly Christian (religion doesn't use cladistic taxonomy, which you can tell by the fact we don't refer to all Abrahamic monotheists as “Jewish”.)
EDIT: To tie this back and summarize my objection to the description, “American Protestantism” is a broad, diverse group united only by a small subset of the content of their religious beliefs, so saying that some other group ends up creating something that looks just like American Protestantism except for the content of belief is using lots of individually meaningful words to concoct a description that says nothing at all.
It is not a necessary condition for the comparison that is being made.
It would need to be a currently existing, non-belief, unifying feature of American Protestantism for it to be a rebuttal of the argument that saying that another thing was like American Protestantism except for the content of beliefs is meaningless because American Protestantism is a diverse community united only by a set of shared beliefs.
I've found people who build an identity around hyper-rationality (e.g. logical positivists) to be -- on average -- some of the most emotionally-driven people. For example, they will have scathing, visceral, passion-fueled outbursts against religion (often despite knowing very little about it, save for the New Atheist talking points). When you try to point out that they're getting impassioned, they deny it. I think this denial is earnest; they might notice their heart-rate increasing, but they will tell you that there is a rational reason for it to be doing so, and that it is therefore not clouding their judgement nor stunting their curiosity for the subject of discussion.
In exactly the same way, I suspect the people running from "American Protestantism" hardly know what it is and hardly pay attention to it, hence your observation.
"There are none so blind as those who will not see."
One interesting essay on the history of some philosophies and worldviews you might like is Eric Vogelin's Science, Politics and Gnosticism (1968). Here he traces a lot of modern thought back to the early Gnostic religion. The lack of self-reflection and particularly the righteousness I see today makes me think his point is very accurate.
I agree to the point where I'd rather hold my tongue than risk creating an echo chamber :P
I will say one thing, though. I grew up in the US and spent about a decade in Europe, and one thing that seems apparent to me (though I can't quite articulate it) is that our short view of history produces a shallow view of culture, and that this in turn inhibits the development of a truly meaningful form of conservatism from emerging. Conserve what, exactly? There are obviously good answers to that question, but nobody seems know them, here. All we have is a narrow, shallow and intellectually stunted slogan of "America was founded on Christian values!". It certainly was, and much of that is worth preserving. So why is it that nobody seems to have a deep understanding of (1) what these values are, (2) their philosophical, theological, historical and political origins, and (3) their absolute singularity? And why isn't anyone talking about these things (except, arguably, someone like Jordan Peterson)? With such a soft target in its sights, it's no surprise that progressives have fallen to the same level of hollow, saccharin discourse. Calling Christianity a fairy tale is a good counter-point when arguing with fundamentalists, but it's literally no smarter than that. It ignores that fairy-tales are informative, universal, and incredibly resilient to the the passing of time. They're actually useful.
I don't know how to fix this. I don't even know how to properly express it. My point seems to be devolving into a ramble, but hopefully you kind of see what I mean.
Reading recommendations are welcome. :)
>One interesting essay on the history of some philosophies and worldviews you might like is Eric Vogelin's Science, Politics and Gnosticism (1968).
This seems right up my alley. Thank you for this.
You are kind of denying that there is a meta game. The fastest way to loose is not to play and you are telling people not to play.
Conversely however, the typical sectarian individualist would demand their religious feelings be respected. Answering the demand would of course affect validation. In this context I find your rule is a contradiction in terms.
I'm already playing the meta game. The claim would be much stronger if your religion should not affect how you express yourself. Would be difficult to talk about it then, and so it would fulfil your demand, except that religion would likely not be your religion.
But really, any good programm should terminate. Can we talk about hacking again?
This is an empty statement. You accuse him of somehow behaving similar to "protestants" with zero further description of why or how this is true.
Lot's of disparate intellectual movements share many ideas, it doesn't make them any better or worse or have any bearing on their value at all.
I used to hang out with a bunch of ex-Evangelicals, and I noticed the same thing. The content of their beliefs changed (radically), but their outlook and habits of mind stayed the same.
> They adjust and build on already-established modes of thought. I think this is called the Horseshoe theory, but that’s usually applied to politics.
I don't think that's Horseshoe theory. IIRC horseshoe theory is more about extremists from different "ends" of the political spectrum having uncanny commonalities, and establishing a kind of moderate/extremist political axis as its own thing.
The rejection of religion as something special that should handled outside of common rules and laws is just that, a rejection. A religious school in my view is no better than one segregated by race, and a religious leader that is talking about believers and unbelievers is no different if they had picked the two groups based on race.
That's because it is used as a slur, a powerful one which can end careers, almost exclusively against members of a single racial group. If that's not a racial slur, then what is?
> The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.
White people are racist by default unless they accept that paradigm and try (hopelessly) to atone for that history.
This is merely an attempt to understand their point of view. For those who believe that America is fundamentally built on structural racism, "a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people", as they claim, then it might seem reasonable to accuse every white person who accepts the status quo of being racist.
Much as it might seem reasonable to call everyone who's just trying to operate a business in America a capitalist, even if they have no strong opinions on political or economic systems and are just trying to sell food.
Sorry but throwing the N word around and casual racism existed before social media.
The "I'm not the racist you are" is childish and unfortunately par for the course in online discourse now.
But I don't use my identity as a white male to paint myself a victim, so maybe I'm off base? Are there other avenues where these previously non-racists were bullied into becoming racists?
Specifically I recall the many posts I've come across to the effect of "I used to be X but the community of Y caused me to become Anti-X".
I'm an under 40 white male who doesn't feel doomed to an existence of being a racist so I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be seeing this?
20 year old me could not have cared less about race except to protest against some elements of our society that I viewed as structurally racist(prison reform, drug and sentencing laws, police reform and accountability). I would have strongly outwardly identified as anti racist at that time.
And I still think of myself as anti racist internally but when I see someone else outwardly promoting anti racism my first thought is that I should stay away from them for risk of getting wrapped up in toxic behavior, not that they are my ideological ally. I definitely intentionally seek not to be viewed as being related or sympathetic to public anti racist movements in the current era.
At this point my views on race are that the concept if it is brought up at all is probably going to be used as a club to beat me with(metaphorically) and that anyone wielding it isn't my friend.
McWhoter is hero IMO for willingly taking on all of the social consequences of stating these view points to advocate for what he thinks is right.
To the extent the hypothetical condition here describes something that actually happened anywhere recently and not a pure counterfactual irrelevancy, I think it's pretty clearly not true, because no recent generation of “young men” has been more effectively manufactured into an army of racist than has ever occurred by any other means.
> Most people under 40 right now were raised to be completely ready to forget about race and treat it like a non-issue.
[citation needed]
This is an astonishing claim, the likes of which I have not heard before. Could you elaborate on this please?
>> I'll turn it around: please provide some reason to believe that some recent generation of American young men has been more effectively manufactured into an army of racists than has ever occurred at any time or place in the past, excluding other times where the mechanism was the same kind of “treating an entire generation of young men as though they are automatically racist” as has supposedly occurred sometime recently in our history.
> It is difficult to parse what you are saying, your post consists of a single run -on sentence is too long to follow.
I think it's pretty clear: the original statement is clearly false, because there are obvious, well-known historical counterexamples to it. It's basically claiming the current American culture creates racist white men more effectively than Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow South, which just ain't so.
As far as I can tell, your GGP comment wasn't actually talking about your lived experience at all. It was making general remarks about society and history that's very external to you, which you can definitely get wrong in ways that can and should be corrected.
For instance, if I told you my lived experience was that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and Biden is a Satan-worshiping cannibal, the exact thing to say to me is that those things aren't true. They aren't lived experience, they're errors in fact.
(On the musical theater bit: some people will hate McWhorter for his heterodoxy on race. I hate him for making me listen to scratchy showtunes to get to the good content.)
By chance have you ever listened to the Conlangery podcast? It's primarily about constructed languages but there's a lot of info and cool factoids about natural languages contained within.
not exactly, no. He took the show over from a duo of other hosts.
He is a professor of linguistics and author of the bastard-tongue book. He is not an expert on sociology, though socio-linguistics is part of the curiculum. Neither is he a expert on history, politics, or all what linguisticis may be tangentially related to (everything!!1).
What he does seem to have on lock down is showmanship and theatrical inventory, but the latter part I'm sure is procured by a team behind the show. It's fa-bu-lush
On linguistics? I'm willing to assume that for the sake of argument. On racial politics? Given his writing on that issue (and not just the current piece) the generous assumption is “no, not at all, he's just a blowhard that's been given a platform because he can spin a tale that people in power like to hear well”.
Being a “bona fide expert” in a different field plus being black doesn't make you an expert on racial politics/social movements.
John McWhorter (and Glen Loury) have hosted a podcast for 14 years on the issue of race in America. You may not like what they have to say, but to say they aren't 'qualified' is ridiculous and it denigrates their work. They are as capable of lending insight into the enigma that is 21st century Black America as any living person.
You could pontificate about me for 14 years without learning more than you know now. Saying robust interpretation just begs the question.
Number of books “put out” (especially for popular audiences) doesn't distinguish between actual experts on subject matter from hacks that are good at telling a story people in positions of privilege like to hear. Except perhaps negatively, as it's a whole lot less work to produce volume if you are worried only about the latter, if you are a skilled storyteller.
> John McWhorter (and Glen Loury) have hosted a podcast for 14 years on the issue of race in America.
Yes, and that's very good evidence that he is a storyteller that is good at connecting a narrative to an audience.
“Successful pundit” and “expert” are not entirely non-overlapping categories, but membership in one of them rarely has much bearing on the other.
If we suppose that outside opposition will harden the movement, then the only way it will falter is if its ostensible beneficiaries -- by the terminology, 'people of color' -- renounce it as not speaking for them. Perhaps McWhorter can plant the seeds of this examination and sustain it before he's swiftly vilified by those among the movement with the most to lose.
If the past is any indication, movements tend to be generational. The next generation will come along and discover for themselves the crises affecting their world. If this movement is incapable of delivering a better outcome for the people it purports to benefit, then it will be challenged by another one. And if it does deliver a better outcome for people of color, but at a profound psychological cost to their sense of self, then it will be challenged just the same.
That trend seems to be shifting. Google was one of the first to accept the movement, and yet they very publicly stood up to it when they accepted Timnit Gebru's threat to resign.
> If we suppose that outside opposition will harden the movement
Hardening isn't the same as strengthening. The "harder", more extreme, more authoritarian the movement becomes, the more it will drive people away, and opportunists who only joined out of expediency or fear won't defend it when it's seriously challenged.
I don't think we'll have to wait a generation for this movement to end, just as it didn't take a generation for its closest recent analogue, McCarthyism, to end.
McWhorter has been making the Cosby-esque “blame American blacks for their disadvantaged condition” since at least 2001, and the natural corollary argument that antiracism advocates are to blame for racism and/or more than racists for maintaining the adverse conditions of black Americans for at least as long, though over time the latter argument seems to have taken primacy for him over the former.
If he were to be “vilified” for those arguments in a way which reduces the reach of his messages, it won’t have been a swift rejection.
Well yeah, if you assemble myriad opinions about racism in society in a long list, many of them won't be coherent. It's either surprisingly naive, or a calculated rhetorical device.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DrIbram/status/135558708058016153...
Do you subscribe to the least and most extreme spectrum of your particular philosophy or political affiliation?
Do you think every conversation about progressing towards the mean should systematically be bogged down by the minimum and maximum? No matter how much they deviate from the standard?
It's naive or calculating to take carefully selected elements from the disparate positions of different people in a diverse group as a “world-view”, much less to demand that that faked-up strawman of worldview be held to a standard of internal consistency.
To claim that it is seems to amount to arguing in bad faith.
In the case where both views presented exist at all, I see no evidence (and McWhorter certainly presents none) that, outside of two where there is no internal conflict in the first place, they exist in any significnace other than as as disparate positions of different people.
Given that, why would I take them as anything else?
But maybe I'm not trying to refute these "Elect" intellectually. Maybe I'm just trying to live my life. Their diverse opinions means that there is nothing I can do to keep them from yelling at me and trying to destroy me. Forget whether it's coherent or not; forget whether within the spread of their opinions there is a credible intellectual position or not. Collectively, they have created a game at which I can only lose.
So to them I say: Forget that. I'm not going to play your game.
In terms of the actual effect on society (and people in society), the contradictions matter. To steal a phrase from a former co-worker, dealing with the "Elect" as a group is like dealing with a psychotic.
(Note well the "as a group". I am not saying that the members of the group are psychotics. I'm saying that the group as a whole interacts something like a psychotic.)
What is the path forward? How do you integrate different races/cultures/etc in a thoughtful way where you can simultaneously acknowledge that we're different but we're also the same?
The only solution I can think of is that we need to be able to talk it through and not get cancelled/shut down/provoke reactions if we get it wrong. Ive changed my point of view on a million different things a million different times, but not because I was force fed the "right" one.
“Identity politics” is too broad of a category for that to be usefully or meaningfully answered beyond “it depends”. You might as well ask “does use of words help or hurt racism”.
White supremacism/nationalism is itself “identity politics” (as is Nation of Islam style black nationalism); the civil rights movement was “identity politics”, the effort in revolutionary Mexico to build a post-racial unifying national identity was “identity politics”.
In france, equality means making nation-wide republican programs where everyone should be treated the same at all part of society. This is a bottom up approach.
In this US, equality means there are grants for women, black, disabled, asians, mulims, jews, blinds, deafs, natives... and pretty much none for white people. Or it's Positive Discrimination. Pretty much everyone is doing stuff for its own group, AGAINST the other groups...
The people (democrats) pretending to fight for equality are just fighting for SPECIFIC MINORITIES all the time. No wonder people voted trump.. at least he was a honest asshole.
If you want evidence of this look at how COVID vaccines are discussed in the US media. The constant refrain isn't about getting the vaccine out to as many people as fast as possible, it is about getting it out to this or that minority group.
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...
"male patients have almost three times the odds of requiring intensive treatment unit (ITU) admission (OR = 2.84; 95% CI = 2.06, 3.92) and higher odds of death (OR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.31, 1.47) compared to females. With few exceptions, the sex bias observed in COVID-19 is a worldwide phenomenon."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19741-6#:~:text=T....
Racism is identity politics.
I interpret accusations of "identity politics" as, most of the time, playing identity politics itself. It just gets to assume that their identity, as the default identity, can't be identity politics.
The way forward is difficult, because these are thorny and deeply linked issues. But they're not made any easier by demands that we erase any dicussion of race from discussions of racism. What is clear about the way forward is that it starts by listening to what people say about racism rather than assume that our experience accurately reflects what happens to people.
If you're getting "shut down" because you're telling black people what happens to black people, maybe you could imagine that they feel that you've been canceling them -- and feel entitled to do so.
If you had started by joining in a chant to lock up the police officers involved, they might have listened to you after they were. Instead, it looks exactly like you're finding excuses to let those police officers off, and that's way more tone deaf than the slogan.
The word "fundamentalist" is unhelpful here, but if you ask adult Christians why they are Christian, I would be willing to bet most would give you a reasonably rational, well-articulated answer (that you may happen to disagree with). The same is true for adults of other religions.
The other problem with this particular statement is that statistics show that lots of Christians stop being Christians. Some were devout Christians who become devout Atheists. Some were lukewarm Christians who stopped going to church. Some never really went to Church, so just stopped calling themselves Christian. On the other hand, there are plenty of biographies of atheists who became Christian.
I'm from the American South and formerly Catholic. In my experience your description would be true of average religions but not the religious fundamentalist crowd. Some reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
Fundamentalists believe firmly in the idea of "faith", which is to accept all teachings from the Bible as truth and nothing else. They cannot be persuaded, they cannot be reasoned with. If you'd asked a fundamentalist questions about creationism as it relates to Higgs-Boson you would not get anything rational in response. Likewise, it would be foolish for you to expect anything different because their beliefs are pretty much open for observation.
> The other problem with this particular statement is that statistics show that lots of Christians stop being Christians
This is only a very recent development (Source: https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christ...) but you're presenting it as longstanding tradition. In reality, up until 2007 religion was continuing to add to their masses.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter
> One more thing: We need a crisper label for the problematic folk. I will not title them “Social Justice Warriors.” That, and other labels such as “the Woke Mob” are unsuitably dismissive. One of the key insights I hope to get across is that most of these people are not zealots.
> The author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here: We will term these people The Elect.
I prefer the term Social Justice Activists.
> Black students must be admitted to schools via adjusted grade and test score standards to ensure a representative number of them and foster a diversity of views in classrooms. But it is racist to assume a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences, and racist to expect them to represent the “diverse” view in classroom discussions.
I don't think this is the contradiction that he presents it as. I understand affirmative action to be an attempt to ameliorate the effects of unjust generational racism. It would undermine that goal to not have a taboo about "assume[ing] a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences," because it would just maintain some of that racism in a different form. Both affirmative action and the taboo are interlocking efforts towards the same goal.
Some might object and say you have obviate the need for that taboo by just not having affirmative action, but the problem with that is that it might take orders of magnitude longer to wash away the effects of the unjust generational racism in the area in question.
There seems to be a belief kicking around that if we could just help minorities in the right way, racism would go away faster.
I don't think this is so. Time after time in US history, the government has tried to institute "helpful" social programs to lift black people up. Time after time, those efforts have failed. Any time that blacks start to build some wealth for themselves, the government comes in to "help" and screws it all up.
Let's look at something like desegregation. Every reasonable person will agree that desegregation needed to happen, but it was rushed and the consequences of it weren't considered like they ought to be.
Black students, many of whom previously went to schools that were less good, were now integrated with racist white students and faculty. So while the "education" part may have been better, they were too concerned with being bullied to actually get a decent education at all. The net result? A poorer education that they would have got at their "worse" black-only school.
Additionally, black-owned businesses were thoroughly destroyed by desegregation. Before desegregating, black business owners had guaranteed business via other black patrons. Afterwards, blacks were free to patronize other businesses when it was convenient, but racist whites at the time still refused to support black business. That ended many black businesses.
The Pruitt-Igoe complex [1] replaced many homes owned by blacks. They thought they were "helping" blacks escape the poor living conditions of their older homes. Instead, they fractured black communities and destroyed the equity they held in their own properties.
A poorly-designed welfare system throughout the 70s and 80s trapped blacks into low-income lifestyles and incentivized fathers not being present at home, which is a significant disadvantage for youths [2].
So here's where this is all going - the government needs to get the fuck out of the way and let black people succeed. We, as society, can and should intervene to stamp out racism _where it is evident_. What you can't do is look at income or incarceration statistics in a vacuum and say "clearly America is still very racist."
There is work to be done, and most people don't dispute that. What is disputed is that fighting racism with racism is an effective strategy. It isn't.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe
[2]: https://www.all4kids.org/news/blog/a-fathers-impact-on-child...
> I don't think this is so. Time after time in US history, the government has tried to institute "helpful" social programs to lift black people up. Time after time, those efforts have failed. Any time that blacks start to build some wealth for themselves, the government comes in to "help" and screws it all up....
> There is work to be done, and most people don't dispute that. What is disputed is that fighting racism with racism is an effective strategy. It isn't.
One problem with this line of argument is that it is often advanced in bad faith by people whose actual goal is to avoid addressing the problem at all.
Another problem with the "do nothing and let it work itself on its own" approach is that it goes against many conceptions of justice. If you repeatedly stole money from me, most people wouldn't consider the matter settled if you got to keep what you stole and were merely prevented from stealing yet more in the future: justice requires at least some effort to repair the past damage, even though those efforts usually quite imperfect (e.g. monetary compensation for wrongful death).
I would guess that a significant contributor to the problems you outlined was an unwillingness to go the full measure to address the problems, often for illegitimate reasons (e.g. racists maintained enough power to block all but half-ass solutions) or legitimate ones (e.g. enough time passed that the direct perpetrators and victims are dead, but unjust effects nevertheless linger).
Why does the intent of the person making the argument matter? The argument stands on its own merits or it doesn't.
> Another problem with the "do nothing and let it work itself on its own" approach is that it goes against many conceptions of justice.
Firstly, nobody said "do nothing." There are plenty of ways to help underprivileged people that _don't_ take their skin color into account. Secondly, do you think that affirmative action does not go against many conceptions of justice?
> If you repeatedly stole money from me, most people wouldn't consider the matter settled if you got to keep what you stole and were merely prevented from stealing yet more in the future: justice requires at least some effort to repair the past damage, even though those efforts usually quite imperfect (e.g. monetary compensation for wrongful death).
OK, let's run with your example. Let's say I stole a bunch of money from you over a period of years and blew it all on drugs. I get caught, go to court, am found guilty. I have no money (or very little, certainly not enough to pay you back), and eventually the drugs catch up to me and I die. But I have a son. Would you submit that "justice" is you collecting money from my son?
That's essentially what's happening. Nobody alive in the US today owns a slave, nor were they a slave. You can spend literally forever talking in circles about the effects of history on people of present day. Yes, things like slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining had bad impacts on black communities. Do we spend forever talking about it? No. And who gets to decide when the wrong has been "righted", anyway?
What we can do is try make society like the society we want to see. Is it "perfect"? No, it will never be. But it's better than playing swing-the-social-pendulum for another 200 years.
The whole point of my original post, and what so many people miss, is how the effort to "repair past damage" _also has negative effects_. Nobody at the time thought about the fact that welfare was trapping blacks in poverty. But it did. A well-intentioned policy change at that time arguably did more harm than good.
Today, I can tell you with confidence [1] that there are lots of white people who have taken notice that medical schools, universities, government institutions, big companies, etc. are happy to lower the bar for black folks. This has two problems: the first is that it doesn't feel fair, which is going to enrage people when the whole conversation is about what's fair. The second is that high-achieving black people will be perceived as less competent by their peers.
> I would guess that a significant contributor to the problems you outlined was an unwillingness to go the full measure to address the problem
What would "full measure" be?
[1]: with over ten anecdotal experiences, because something like this is not "socially acceptable" to study
That attitude might work for arguments like mathematical proofs, but we're talking about social policy here. It's too complex for that kind of certainty, so trust and good faith matter.
Also your argument was essentially like this: the Soviet Mars 2 probe failed to land on Mars. So did the Soviet Mars 2, 3, 6, and 7 probes. Therefore, NASA shouldn't try to land Viking 1 on Mars, since governments have been shown to not be able to do that kind of thing successfully.
> OK, let's run with your example....
> That's essentially what's happening. Nobody alive in the US today owns a slave, nor were they a slave. You can spend literally forever talking in circles about the effects of history on people of present day. Yes, things like slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining had bad impacts on black communities. Do we spend forever talking about it? No. And who gets to decide when the wrong has been "righted", anyway?
That is not in fact what's happening today, which is why the response consists of social policies like affirmative action instead of stuff like garnishing the wages of the descendants of slaveholders to repay the descendants of slaves. I even alluded to that.
Another way to look at it is the wrong wasn't solely committed by the individuals involved (e.g. slaveholders), but by the government and other institutions that enacted policies like slavery and Jim Crow. The government and those institutions still exist, and have the responsibility and ability to take corrective action.
Running with examples is like running with scissors; they're both bad ideas that can turn to serious errors.
That's absolutely ridiculous. You can evaluate the policy and make an educated assessment as to what its effect will be. The person suggesting the policy is not some kind of oracle, they don't have some mystical ability to foresee how the policy will play out in practice. So again, their intent doesn't matter, only the content of the policy does. This smells an awful lot like a way to discard the policies of people you don't like without attacking the policies on their merits.
> That is not in fact what's happening today, which is why the response consists of social policies like affirmative action instead of stuff like garnishing the wages of the descendants of slaveholders to repay the descendants of slaves.
You make it sound as though affirmative action is without cost to the people who don't benefit from it. Even the least-intrusive form of affirmative action, where organizations must actively ensure their employment processes are not discriminatory, have a cost. But I'm not opposed to that piece specifically.
What is more often costly to individuals is affirmative action that is implemented in the form of a hiring quota. If you lose a job versus someone who looks good for "quota" purposes, sure, your wages aren't garnished by the government directly, but you lost out all the same. And then you might say something like "they're white, they'll be fine, they can just get a job somewhere else." As if to imply that all white people come from privileged enough backgrounds that it's not even an issue worth caring about.
> I even alluded to that.
If you're going to have a conversation about something like social policy, perhaps do something better than "allude".
> Another way to look at it is the wrong wasn't solely committed by the individuals involved (e.g. slaveholders), but by the government and other institutions that enacted policies like slavery and Jim Crow. The government and those institutions still exist, and have the responsibility and ability to take corrective action.
Here is the problem. A government is not an entity that exists in the same way as a person, or even a company does. Saying that "the government" must take corrective action really means _all of the American people_. And that gets right back to the issue of fairness, because as soon as you start spending government money to solve this problem, you spend taxpayer money.
> Running with examples is like running with scissors; they're both bad ideas that can turn to serious errors.
Closing with a comment like this -- suggestive of a slam dunk -- seems like the more serious error when a great many parts of my argument went completely unaddressed.
I used to write off all of McWhorter's race punditry, but as I have continued to follow him as a linguistics communicator, I've seen more peeks that he has thoughtful and non head-in-the-sand views on the subject, which makes it easier to take what he says seriously. I wish this article had included some real acknowledgement of the continued effects of racism in our society, but perhaps that would have only proved to be a distraction.
- blogspam
- flame bait (with the obvious caveats)
- excessive reposts
etc.
It just sucks when something like this gets swept up.
Anyone else see this article as incredibly two-faced? He's lowkey slipping in the assumption that we all want to be broadly excluding people from intuitions based on their beliefs and then complains about... people wanting to exclude him?
In france, equality means making nation-wide republican programs where everyone should be treated the same at all part of society. This is a bottom up approach.
In this US, equality means there are grants for women, black, disabled, asians, mulims, jews, blinds, deafs, natives... and pretty much none for white people. Or it's Positive Discrimination. Pretty much everyone is doing stuff for its own group, AGAINST the other groups... It's even men vs women in some parts of the dating scene..
The people (democrats) pretending to fight for equality are just fighting for SPECIFIC MINORITIES all the time. No wonder people voted trump.. at least he was a honest asshole.
And is now widely accepted as "woke" and generally accepted as correct behavior.
This isn't going to end as pleasantly as proponents expect.
That being said...
This article is the very definition of a straw man. Absolutely no one subscribes to the position it critiques.
On the other hand, a fair number of people (including myself) subscribe to the position that, although things are not nearly as bad as they have been in the past, there is still a latent undercurrent of actual racism in the U.S. which sometimes bubbles to the surface and manifests itself in various harmful ways, up to and including (but far from limited to) black people being systematically disenfranchised, and publicly tortured and killed by authorities, often with impunity. To people like me, straw-man arguments like the one in TFA (and F does not stand for Fine in this case) are offensive because I of course agree that the position being critiqued is risible. Whether or not it was the author's intent, some people will surely read it as saying, tacitly, there is no problem, and anyone who says there is a problem is being hysterical or otherwise detached from reality.
Well, there is a problem, and there has been for hundreds of years. We have made a lot of progress towards solving this problem. But we have not yet solved fully solved it, and anyone who says that we have, particularly when they say it in such a condescending way, is part of the problem.
[UPDATE] A lot of people are disputing my claim here. What no one has yet done is provide an actual reference to anyone going on the record to endorse the ten-point position that McWhorter calls "third-wave anti-racism." Lots of anecdotes. Zero data.
I'm expecting 90% of the comments on this article to be some form of this. Many people think racism ended when we elected Obama.
Edit: This comment went from +7 to -1 in a matter of a page refresh. HN should be cognizant of brigading on threads like this. But moreso, the people doing it should also ask themselves why, especially on such a scientific and curious forum, they think the simple asking of certain questions should be so vehemently and anonymously punished.
> Feldman used data from the Guardian’s 2015 investigation into police killings, The Counted, and compared it with data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). That dataset, which is kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was found to have misclassified 55.2% of all police killings, with the errors occurring disproportionately in low-income jurisdictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/11/police-killi...
A lot of people seem to take the approach of: the data's good if it says what I want; if it doesn't, it's probably wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
A lot of people are surprised to learn that the number of unarmed black men shot by police in recent years is often between 15-20 given the rhetoric around the issue.
The number is disproportionally higher than white men, but Roland Fryer’s research suggests that when taking into account context, such as crime rates, there is no statistical difference in police shootings based on race, though he did find a persistent difference in other types of police encounters.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-ana...
Black Americans are disproportionately poor, disproportionately raised in single parent homes, disproportionately forced into poorly run schools, and disproportionately victimized by crime. Those issues are difficult to address and should all get a lot of attention because they are the context in which disproportionate encounters with police occur. While police reform is an important issue for everyone, the overheated rhetoric around racist cops is performative and distracting.
General claims that the statistics are wrong (all of them?) don't seem particularly helpful, especially if the implication is that we should follow anecdotes or preconceived ideas instead of statistics.
But one also has to understand that their personal experience is not the sum total of experiences.
Here's a thread with numbers from 2019 claiming blacks are actually killed less:
https://mobile.twitter.com/LeonydusJohnson/status/1267466345...
Here's a famous (now notorious) article from nytimes claiming there is no racial disparity when it comes to police shootings:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of...
Consider the fact that men are killed by police to an even more disproportionate extent than black people in America - 9:1 vs. black's 4:1 disparity. Is this evidence of misandry of magnitude even larger than racism? Are we supposed to ignore that there is a similar disparity in the rates at which men commit crimes relative to women?
[1] https://www.pbs.org/show/created-equal-clarence-thomas-his-o...
And a message like this, aimed squarely at the woke left and requiring no compromise on the part of a conservative reader, is pure mana for that audience. The Greenwald essay that spiked here (briefly) yesterday is in the same genre.
Basically: straw men arguments aimed at the seemingly ascendant left are going to be big business around here for the next few years.
[1] To be fair: he's also a professional linguist with a real day job as a professor at Columbia. Go find and read his Power of Babel book at some point, it's great.
>Black people are a conglomeration of disparate individuals. “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms because black people have a culture of their own.
>I write this viscerally driven by the fact that all of this supposed wisdom is founded in an ideology under which white people calling themselves our _saviors_ make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species, and teach black people to revel in that status and cherish it as making us special.
>And a message like this, aimed squarely at the woke left and requiring no compromise on the part of a conservative reader, is pure mana for that audience
Without knowing my identity, which compromises am I missing when I read this article?
That's the dumbest, most offensive thing I've read in quite a while. Perhaps among a certain set of people that is true (call those people "racists" as shorthand). But as an actual Black person, it's ridiculously offensive to define "Black culture" that way.
> white people calling themselves our _saviors_ make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species
This belongs to a category of arguments that reset time to zero as the sentence is being written. As such, it's almost beneath rebuttal. (If you require rebuttal, any child who has lost her milk teeth can provide sufficient rebuttal.)
> which compromises am I missing when I read this article?
The compromise they do not have to make is that of realizing that the claptrap they read (some of which you quoted) is pandering to them and their infantile understanding of the United States.
Yes, I find the savior complex condescending and dismissive of individual agency.
Anyone who chooses to present the pop culture caricature described by McWhorter is making a racially-guided editorial decision.
The most powerful part of the current antiracist movement is the Congressmembers and members of the current administration who are working on the systemic apparatus, for example by promoting a new Voting Rights Act. (Indeed, there is a certain obliqueness in his references to "The Elect" as a group of people while ignoring the role of elected officials. This, as over 100 bills wind through legislatures with the singular goal of reducing voting access for minority groups.)
McWhorter ignores the policy arm that makes a real difference in the lives of tens of millions in favor of elevating the critiques of a very narrow set of people. I can go the rest of my life without interacting with The Elect, but the laws this 116th Congress enacts me may follow me the rest of my life.
By elevating The Elect to a position they do not occupy outside of small niche areas like academia, McWhorter creates a straw man that he then proceeds to tear down. It's a pretty weak argument for an academic of his intellect to make.
I just finished reading this article in its entirety, and I think I might’ve missed this part. My impression was that the author is describing a proselytizing ideology that happens to be based on skin color and draws legitimacy from historical perfidies. Actual progress on racism seemed to me to be orthogonal to what the author was talking about.
Well, I dispute it.
Seems to me maybe what he's seeing is not a religion where people are required to hold two incompatible beliefs in their head, but the result of public discourse where basically rational and consistent, yet angry, people fall on different sides of an issue and their voices in concert become incoherent.
In which case, the solution is perhaps: don't get sucked into the sturm und drang based on everything you read on Reddit. Be compassionate. Pay attention to what's around you. Look for opportunities to make a difference.
OK, this just isn't credible.
> Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own.
You've never heard the slogan "Silence is violence"?
> Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate. What is not your culture is not for you, and you may not try it or do it. But—if you aren’t nevertheless interested in it, you are a racist.
You didn't see the national outrage over a girl wearing a Chinese dress to prom?
> When whites move away from black neighborhoods, it’s white flight. But when whites move into black neighborhoods, it’s gentrification, even when they pay black residents generously for their houses.
You've never heard of "white flight" or "gentrification"?
I simply don't believe you if you are saying the arguments put forth in his ten-point characterization are uncommon.
Have you been on Twitter or a college campus lately? There absolutely are people who believe those things to their core. I have spoken to many people who subscribe to those positions both online and off.
I am not saying we should throw the baby out with the bathwater but disregarding the extremists in the anti-racism movement is just burying your head in the sand.
No. I live in a bubble. And no, I am not being facetious. I really have not been to a college campus for a long time, and I really don't read Twitter. Nonetheless...
> There absolutely are people who believe those things to their core.
I have a very hard time believing this. Can you point me to some evidence on the record that is longer than 140 characters?
In particular, I would expect someone to point me to a reference where the point of view that McWhorter describes is actually endorsed by someone other than McWhorter.
I'm so tired of getting gaslit about this. My opinion on neoracism is the reason I am posting with a throwaway.
Thank you John Worter for helping to rebrand so-called "Antiracism" to what it really is. Neoracism.
I don't especially like Kendi. Here's what he says about kendi in the article though.
> Ibram X. Kendi has written a book on how to raise antiracist children called Antiracist Baby.
...
That's it. He says he wrote a book called Antiracist Baby. That name drop does not do anything to strengthen his position. Unless I'm missing something there's not even a cherry picked quote out of context. It's just implied to self-evidently support his position.
This email (unofficial) has the title "How to Be Antiracist." The only thing McWhorter did was to reorder the bullets, putting some next to each other.
None of those are made up.
The very next sentences after your quote discusses the book. The next paragraph also says this:
> Talking of Antiracist Baby, I am especially dismayed at the idea of this indoctrination infecting my daughters’ sense of self. I can’t always be with them, and this anti-humanist ideology may seep into their school curriculum. I shudder at the thought: teachers with eyes shining at the prospect of showing their antiracism by teaching my daughters that they are poster children rather than individuals.
> None of those are made up.
By definition they are made up. The question is by whom. I cannot find these tenets by googling them. The first link to "third wave antiracist tenets" is this very article. The fact that someone sent you an email is pretty irrelevant, and frankly dubious. I'm open to being proven wrong, but if these aren't published by a noteworthy source, they're utterly irrelevant. I don't like Kendi. I think his work is opportunistic and stuck in semantics. But I don't think he's going to write dumb shit like what the author anchors everyone on baselessly. And even if he did, I feel confident that 99% of americans would say they're not accurate portrayals of their views.
edit: on a reread, it sounds like you're saying there's just a separate email with different content. Just because this author uses the words "antiracist" doesn't mean his portrayal of another person's portrayal of the word are the same, or that either are salient.
> The very next sentences after your quote discusses the book. The next paragraph also says this:
The quote you provided contains literally nothing from the book, just him doubling down that he doesn't like it.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for.
If labeling it anti- then because it only needs mention when contradicting racism, but it can be an independent position held by anyone who simply disregards at least the name, or one of the various concepts attached. This has befuddeld me for a long time because via exposure I thought anti racism was the norm, but accademia frequently dabbles in racist topic (though without making value judgements). One reason to reject it is that drawing differences invariably leads to a sense of competition and all that follows. Vice versa, I pressume, that denying actual differences can also lead to losses (disenfrenchise) may then appear as new racism.
Branding that as racism is simply incivil, because it ascribes intent or lantent aggression where there is none. It's not all about name-calling, but abstractly speaking it is. So, please don't defend an abstract position without accurately describi g it (in case I misinterpreted anything), because that really is indistinguishable from a scarecrow.
The problem is with using the word "Antiracist" as a label or name. There is a movement that tries to use the word as a name, but is a case of a wolf in sheep's clothing. This movement is attempting to rewrite history. To teach that, for example, Lincoln was evil, didn't do enough, and should be erased. This is despicable and destructive. McWhorter simply, rightly, calls them wolves.
Post mortem: Yes, I frequently neglect that sense of anti-, and rebracket such compounds differently. I could go on in the same sense of manipulation on the word level. Is an anti-anti-anti-racist position tennable?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. In addition to the flamewar aspect, "you obviously didn't read the article [etc.]" is explicitly against the rules.
McWhorter doesn't say that we have solved it. In fact, in the linked essay he outright says that he supports protesting for civil rights in general and he approves of aspects of the BLM movement.
People are not problems: ideas might be.
If you treat people as problems, then you are not solving anyone.
Ask yourself why you even think about these trivial issues like who is racist?
Ask yourself why the establishment media doesn’t talk about who owns and controls the vast wealth in this country? Which has more impact and can benefit people of all races.
Rather, they affirm that America is a system of power and social relations that keep the underclass just as effectively subjugated as slavery, without the need for intentional bigotry. And they intend to undo it.
George Washington is not being removed from school names because there is a tail problem with bigotry that we’ve made progress on. They believe they must deny Washington any place of honor, so that BIPOC children feel safe enough to succeed.
Of course we have not “solved racism.” But it is not a straw man to point out the false religion of the iconoclasts claiming to have a solution.
I've personally encountered people and organizations that . Several who, for instance, decried white flight on one hand but on the other hand criticized whites (and Asians) moving into poor neighborhoods in San Francisco. One company I worked at set up a system of reserving headcount specifically for underrepresented demographics, while simultaneously declared that any notion that the company extended preferential treatment to said groups was hateful and not acceptable.
I think these people are well-intentioned but are too scared to confront controversy or navigate nuance in their views. So they resort to this sort of contradiction to try and avoid it.
However, McWhorter makes the claim that third-wave racism is mainstream. The existence of two books endorsing a point of view is not evidence that this point of view is mainstream, or even widespread. If it were, then flat-eartherism would be mainstream.
Better yet, read them! They answer your question.
>The existence of two books endorsing a point of view is not evidence that this point of view is mainstream.
Since "mainstream" is a judgement call, I don't think anyone can directly demonstrate that to your liking. If you're genuinely curious about this subject, this would be a good time to do some reading.
What question is that? I don't see how reading these books could possibly persuade me of anything other than there are two people who espouse some overly extreme ideas with regards to racism. And I will happily concede that without reading them. So I was wrong when I said that "absolutely no one" believes this crap. Two people believe it. Maybe even 100. Maybe even 1000.
But McWhorter claims that third-wave anti-racism is mainstream (his word) and so far I have seen zero evidence of that.
Surely you agree some are held by significant numbers of people. Take his #3 for example. You haven’t heard people claiming “Silence is violence?” While decrying the Karens’ inability to just listen?
"Silence about racism is violence."
Yes, I am highly skeptical that a significant number of people profess to believe this. It sounds like clear hyperbole to me.
CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-silence-on-social-media-w...
Houston Chronicle: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/article/Speaking-up-ag...
Here is the Google scholar search, to show that the phrase is widespread, and not particularly used as hyperbole among scholars. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=“silence+is+viole...
So, beauty magazines, mainstream press, and the academy. What part of that is not widespread?
Ed: more, since this was only 1 for 4, in your mind. College administrators: https://www.naspa.org/blog/silence-is-violence-why-using-our...
Hockey players. https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/mark-fraser-racis...
Twin Cities teenagers, inspired by BLM protests: https://www.twincities.com/2020/07/22/roseville-teens-keep-m...
The editor of Governing Magazine. https://www.governing.com/now/A-Shattered-Complacency-When-S...
Sophie Turner, as seen in the Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8395851/Pregna...
What, exactly, is your quantum of proof here?
The Houston Chronicle story does feature an interview with Cherry Steinwender, executive director of the Center for Healing Racism, explicitly endorsing this point of view. That is the first actual data point I have seen.
The Google Scholar search brings up a lot of articles containing the phrase "silence is violence" but a lot of them are red herrings having nothing to do with the matter at hand.
So that's one valid data point. Better than nothing, but still a long way from a self-evidently mainstream point of view as McWhorter claims.
Likewise, "Silence is violence" doesn't literally mean what it says. What the people who recite it actually mean, I suspect, is that if you do not actively speak out against racism then you are complicit in it, which is a not-entirely-unreasonable position.
But McWhorter was not talking about the slogan. His wording presents it as a literal truth.
You're making that up. This is everything he said about the slogan: "3. Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own." There is absolutely nothing to suggest that he is forcing a literal meaning of the phrase.
Originally you said "I am highly skeptical that a significant number of people profess to believe this." Now that your claim has been proven false, you're moving the goal posts to "people don't believe in its literal meaning" and trying to pretend that McWhorter suggested otherwise. Yet you accuse McWhorter of strawmanning. Ironic.
Actually there is: the inclusion of the words "about racism". "Silence is violence" is a catchy slogan. "Silence about racism is violence" is less catchy, so it is not at all implausible that he did not intend it to be read as a slogan, but rather an actual literal assertion.
One should generally try to figure out what the author's intended meaning was, rather than twist the meaning into something that's easy to argue against but the author would never approve of.
All of them except #3 and #10, and neither of those are contradictions (the idea that #10 is involves the fallacy of division, the idea that #3 is...IDK what the shortest route to that would be; mistaking “a > b” for “b = 0”, metaphorically, I guess.)
And that's for “mainstream among radical antiracists” not, mainstream-mainstream.
That antiracism can be meaningfully analyzed in waves and that, if it is, what McWhorter describes as Third Wave Antiracism is meaningfully one of them are all, for that matter.
AFAICT “Third Wave Antiracism” is just something McWhorter latched on to because it provides an excuse to dust off the template of standard establishment and right-wing critiques of Fourth Wave Feminism, including the implicit acknowledgement that the previous waves were good, and deploy them in defense of the continued neglect of the marginalized by elites in favor of victim and advocate blaming.
I've seen people argue every point listed there. Not at the same time, but still.
> We have made a lot of progress towards solving this problem. But we have not yet solved fully solved it
Sure. There's a lot of racism to fight. But that doesn't mean we should just ignore people pushing bullshit under antiracism banners.
> and anyone who says that we have, particularly when they say it in such a condescending way, is part of the problem.
Going too far with antiracism is possible and just as harmful. If you go far enough you make young people think all antiracism is a joke. Then they just stop thinking of racism as something bad in general. In some countries this point isn't far in the future.
We can argue where the line is (for me the concept of "cultural appropriation" is already absurd enough), but the fact that there is a line should be pretty obvious.
Please elaborate and cite. You dismiss the entire article (i.e. the subject of discussion) with the wave of a hand before diving into your own battle against straw men.
For instance:
> publicly tortured and killed by authorities
In 2016, 266 black people were killed by police in the U.S. [1] In 2020, that value is estimated to be 233 [2]. That is out of 46 million black people in the U.S., or approximately 0.0006%. No data available on "public torture". While I would agree that any death at the hands of police is unfortunate (though NOT unavoidable), I think most reasonable people would agree that 0.0006% is hardly representative of a widespread or systemic issue that typifies the policing of black people.
> there is no problem
Another straw man. McWhorter states explicitly:
> [This article] is not an argument against protest
> I am calling for [black people] to be treated with true dignity
> I am not arguing against the basic premises of Black Lives Matter
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...
I see a few flaws in your argument.
1. Death statistics likely do not represent the entire problem, but rather the tip of the iceberg. Deaths/murders are rare overall, but hard to hide.
2. Your 0.0006% is calculated in a way to give one of the smallest possible magnitudes, and doesn't really offer any useful comparison. You can do similar to minimize any issue. If you wanted to make an argument against there being a systemic issue here, you really ought to compare per-capita black deaths-by-police to per-capita white deaths-by police or something. This paper [1] (first result of my Google search) give such a comparison and states:
> The highest levels of inequality in mortality risk [from police use of force] are experienced by black men. Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the life course than are white men. Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are white women.
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/is-the-elect-a-mere-col...
> 1. When black people say you have insulted them, apologize with profound sincerity and guilt. But don’t put black people in a position where you expect them to forgive you.
Yeah, indeed if anyone feels insulted it's quite a natural first reaction to apologize. On the other hand, unless you're having a bad day, try to have a thick skin yourself.
> 2. “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms.
This one... wtf? And no, I don't expect anyone to pretend they're white.
> 3. Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own.
So is the author arguing that silence about racism is a good thing then? And we generally want expert voices elevated on specific topics. I do think many black people know quite a bit about experiencing racism.
> 4. You must strive eternally to understand the experiences of black people. But you can never understand what it is to be black, and if you think you do you’re a racist.
Replace black by science and racist by stupid. Not so illogical then, is it?
> 5. Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate.
Oh come on. All people ask is things like: don't do blackface, it's dumb. Like dressing up as an SS. Fully legal, as it should be, but really dumb.
> 6. [...] But seek to have black friends. If you don’t have any, you’re a racist.
(facepalm) I'll stop here.
> Oh come on. All people ask is things like: don't do blackface, it's dumb. Like dressing up as an SS. Fully legal, as it should be, but really dumb.
I saw this document[1] making the rounds on twitter recently. Do you think the proposals in the document are good ones that all people should adhere to, or do you think they are completely ridiculous and worthy of ridicule? Or somewhere in between? I'm specifically speaking of the AAVE section.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1Ioy3CDX_iR75DNJwvz7f...
> Why does this document even matter?
There is a massive discussion thread here, with multiple people saying "No one believes <unreasonable thing X>; it's really about <reasonable thing Y>". As in, "no one believes using a 100 emoji is cultural appropriation; people are just saying don't wear blackface". But every single bit of evidence (which includes things like best-selling books, essays in the prestige press, statements by government officials, etc) is dismissed as not real evidence that a substantial number of people believe something.
I suppose it's not something that can be resolved by Internet argumentation, only time. In a couple years we'll know whether this document is indeed ridiculous, or whether it's obvious that non-Black people should not use AAVE slang online.
That's demonstrably false. Ibram X. Kendi is the most notorious counterexample. A cursory google search will reveal activist groups organized against these principles.
And these are just the ones who explicitly subscribe to the position.
The article critiques a position that consists of multiple beliefs. While it is true that ~nobody subscribes to all of them, each individual belief is very well-represented amongst the "anti-racists." As a consequence, to anyone under attack by a Twitter mob, the situation looks exactly as McWhorter describes: you're being hit from all directions by the entire span of mutually contradictory nonsense.
You can get a quick overview of the book's ideas on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility#Synopsis). It links also an interesting article discussing the book (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-r...).
Quote from the article:
> Unlike Kendi, who boldly defines racism, DiAngelo is endlessly deferential--for her, racism is basically whatever any person of color thinks it is. In the story she tells about the world, she and her fellow white people have all the power, and therefore all the responsibility to do the gruelling but transformative spiritual work she calls for. The story makes white people seem like flawed, complicated characters; by comparison, people of color seem good, wise, and perhaps rather simple.
If you look a little bit, you will find many stories that fit into the 10 points. One of my favorite examples is how an (Asian American) reporter got fired for quoting from an interview from an African American man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Fang#The_Intercept).
> In June 2020, Fang was accused of racism by Akela Lacy, a colleague at The Intercept. This occurred after Fang shared a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about remaining non-violent and tweeted out an interview in which a black man at a George Floyd protest expressed concern about black-on-black crime.
The best part of the story? The person who set of the Twitter storm to get Fang fired, then a colleague of Lee Fang at the Intercept, is (to my knowledge) a white woman pretending to be Black.
I don't doubt that. In a nation of 300+ million you can find someone who believes just about anything. But it's still a very long way from there to the conclusions that the conjunction of those ten points is a mainstream point of view, which is what McWhorter claims.
Nonetheless, thanks for the references and the considered response.
Regarding "but is it really mainstream": Difficult question. I believe the answer is a "yes" with many caveats and clarifications.
How to define "mainstream"? Maybe your definition is "among the entire US population, less than 10 % believe the 10-points" or something similar. I think McWhorter has another frame of reference: (non-right wing) media, (higher) education, (non-right wing) politics and a subset of economical organisations (think Silicon Valley). Within these organisations, you should not be surprised to witness an adherence to at least some of the 10-points, and receive punishment if you loudly oppose them.
A recent data point: The New York Times has fired an acclaimed science reporter (specialized on COVID, nonetheless), because in 2019 he dared to utter the N-word in the following context: A student asked him for an example of egretious racism, to which he replied with saying "If somebody said the N-word". He dared to utter the word actually, leading to the recent events (https://quillette.com/2021/02/09/with-a-star-science-reporte...). Just like in Harry Potter, the mere utterance of a word has magic effects. To me, this is literally a regression to the Dark Ages. The word is the thing, saying it out loud stirrs the evil.
Of course this is just one anecdote, but there are many similar anecdotes. At which point does it become a trend? Here it becomes important to note that there is no need for a majority to command social change. Instead, small but determined minorities are extremely successful in getting what they want. The mechanics behind that are currently a hot topic of debate (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...).
However, the important takeaway is that critical race theory ("white fragility") is not the only "this cannot be real" movement taking hold of universities, social media, established media outlets and politics. In places of higher education you may find yourself drastically punished if you insist that sex has a biological basis, that vocational interests are not evenly distributed between genders, that the American Civil War indeed aimed at freeing slaves, or that hiring decisions should be primarily based on merit of the applicants.
From your other comments I gathered that you are relatively new to "this", whatever this is. I suppose your priors were calibrated in a time certain tenets of humanism such as the value of truth, rationality and the universality of human experience were common place, especiall among the left. The tectonic shift we are witnessing today is that these tenets are declared to be false and even imoral, and that the proponents of such views are gaining the upper hand. I will sound dramatic, but I fear that the progress won by the period of enlightenment is in grave danger.
I probably have not convinced you that what I am saying is actually happening, but that's ok. This would take a longer discussion, there is a lot to unpack here. Perhaps you can consider it as a possibility, and adjust your priors for future events.
I'll address the biggest names that have risen during this new movement. Kendi's and DiAngelo's books are written exactly as McWhorter puts it. Coates's is more heartfelt, but ends on an incredibly nihilistic note. Kendi and DiAngelo are the Beyonce and JayZ of the diversity training world. They are the ones moving indefensible goal posts.
The common reply to my claims is that Kendi and DeAngelo are media faces and that 'real' academics have more principled approaches. However, these same academics fall in line when the media faces conjure a mob movement without a word of dissent. Any critics are immediately labelled as conservative/racist and bigots. Part of the reason John can say the things he can, is because he is a black academic and has established a long history of goodwill towards the black community in the US. Else, he would have been character assassinated twice over.
> anyone who says that we have, particularly when they say it in such a condescending way, is part of the problem.
Aren't you strawmanning John now? He never claims that racism is over. He has also seen every institution cover in fear towards this new prescriptive dogma without so much as whimper. He gets talked down to and is increasingly put under greater scrutiny than his intellectual opposition. I find it entirely fair that his tone is colored with condescension.
Probably. I have a hard time remaining completely dispassionate about this.
Back home in India, people frequently die on the streets and 50% of the children are malnourished. It is odd to see Americans get passionate to the point refusing to engage with the opposition on issues. Especially when the problems do not seem as major when put in perspective with the problems facing 3rd world nationals.
I live in an international community house and the difference between European and American progressives is quite stark. The Europeans are economically quite left and socially progressive, but cannot empathize with the American culture war at all. Macron and Le Pen voters can enjoy a drink together. This new anti-racism movement specifically stumps most of us non-Americans, many of whom are minorities and from ultra-liberal communities ourselves.
Engaging sincerely with someone in opposition reveals an incredibly amount of nuance that most difficult issues have. Prescriptive politics of coercion is often brought down by blind spots that could have been avoided had they only been less pigheaded about it.
From reading the piece, he seems more of a Friedman/Brooks hack (much more common in the mainstream media), but still a hack.
> This article is the very definition of a straw man. Absolutely no one subscribes to the position it critiques.
McWhorter seems to be really keen (not just in this piece) on adapting the old and problematic waves of feminism model and applying it, badly and without much basis, to “antiracism”.
> What no one has yet done is provide an actual reference to anyone going on the record to endorse the ten-point position that McWhorter calls "third-wave anti-racism."
I doubt you could find much support for people supporting any of them (except maybe #3, which is perfectly internally consistent without even superficial contradiction, and #10, in which the implication of contradiction is based entirely in the fallacy of division, like, come to think of it, much racism.)
Most of them have superficial resemblance to things people actually believe, but have been subtly twisted to make strawmen.
As one example, McWhorter’s number 2 is:
> Black people are a conglomeration of disparate individuals. “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms because black people have a culture of their own.
An actual real thing many antiracists believe is:
> Black people are a conglomeration of disparate individuals. Reference to a singular “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms because black people have cultures of their own.
The differences are subtle in terms of the change in words, but gigantic in terms of change of meaning.
And it seems obvious that even if people magically had no more racists thoughts or decisions starting in 2021, as if a side effect of COVID was ending racist beliefs, the intergenerational effects would mean the effects of racism would continually disadvantage large swathes of people. As a society, we should work to reduce the impact of past mistakes, should we not?
For instance, you won't find anyone simply stating without context to hold these 10 positions. If you're expecting that, you wouldn't find it no matter how many people actually held those opinions.
Another issue is that any data people _actually_ do bring you can dismiss as "non-representative", as you have not set your standards of evidence.
For instance, if you want scholarly research proving X% of Americans think so and so, you won't find any, for a plethora of reasons. That does not mean that X% of Americans don't think so and so.
I do believe your argument is coherent, and that McWhorter might be exaggerating and even strawmanning a bit - but if you want data, you need to specify in advance what's the standard of evidence you'll accept and people can then determine whether that's a reasonable standard.
Well, I'll give you an example from a different but related issue: the question of whether the Confederate states seceded in order to defend slavery. Some people deny this, claiming that it was more about "states rights" or "heritage" or something like that. So here are some quotes from the Declaration of Causes of the Seceding States [1]:
"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization."
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."
"She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
"...the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations..."
Then in the Bill of Rights of the Confederate Constitution [2] we read:
"4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
So that seems pretty clear to me. When people mean something, they generally say it plainly.
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[1] https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
I think this is key to understanding this article, and perhaps he should have led with it.
I tend to think of myself as a "classical liberal" in the sense that I value freedom, and that I believe that tolerance and freedom of expression are foundational to a healthy democratic society.
I think the "thought police" aspect of what McWhorter calls "third wave antiracism" is concerning. It reminds me of McCarthyism, and I have imagined that this is unsustainable and will eventually dissipate. But of course, that is not guaranteed.
> However, they and everyone else should also realize: I know quite well that white readers will be more likely to hear out views like this when written by a black person, and consider it nothing less than my duty as a black person to write it.
I think this is correct as well. It seems right to be that we should primarily be looking to people from the black community as thought leaders on these issues. Their debate, based in first-hand experience, is more interesting and noteworthy to me.
McWhorter also contributes to a group called 1776 Unites (https://1776unites.com), which is a group of black leaders and scholars generally writing counter narratives to the mainstream, or what McWhorter has called "third wave antiracism." Again, as a "classical liberal," I find their ideas worth considering.
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A side note, I have a copy of McWhorter's book "Words on the Move," and I highly recommend it :)
Which is why I find his political takes such as this one...so disappointing. Generally my biggest criticism is that he's not nearly as far left as he positions himself and often makes himself a useful idiot deployed against those who actually are.
"Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me wanted to teach his son that America is set against him; I want to teach my kids the reality of their lives in the 21st rather than early-to-mid-20th century. Lord forbid my daughters internalize a pathetic—yes, absolutely pathetic in all of the resonances of that word—sense that what makes them interesting is what other people think of them, or don’t."
This reeks of "racism is dead or nearly so" which is laughable given the protests of the past year especially when juxtaposed against the police response compared to the state capitol protests that culminated in the insurrection in D.C.
"Third Wave Antiracism is losing innocent people jobs. It is coloring, detouring and sometimes strangling academic inquiry."
The first sentence falls under outrage obsessed social media more broadly and is lacking any sort of evidence.
The second is remarkably ignorant of the suppression/ignoring of ideas and views that have recently been forced into broader conversation. Combined with the previous comment on race that I highlighted it points to a "Let's go back in time" mentality that is the complete antithesis of progressive political thought.
Even taking the points apart, the two halve don’t seem realistic even in isolation but more like if someone took an intentional misunderstanding of what people actually say, and then further took the misunderstanding down a slippery slope.
However, gens in the Roman republic concerned nobility of certain families, often only in name and different degrees. So it is not the 20th century black and white kind of racism, but something a little more particular, what is very much related to oligarchic nepotism, land ownership rights, and yes, nationalism and racism.
The irony of the matter is that gentrification in its current public image concerns people being priced out of the inner cities where their families have been living for gen-erations.
On the other hand, besides pricing, it might implicate discriminatory practices for who's being given a room, and a job, a place to study, who creates the jobs, and who gets the chance to raise a kid without toiling away as a wage slave on no income after rent.
Gosh, that's only the word's root and I'm not even totally sure about that one. Genious and gene (drift) are related as well, but I typically like to compare rhymes which on the face of it are unrelated, like centri, because it's entertaining to speculate how they could be related. See, old classical Latin had no G but used C (or Cu, whence the practice of transcribing hard G as Gu in French, e.g. Guernica); Greek and everyone else had /g/ in the alphabet where Latin has C and I have it from a good source that place value was rather more structly observed than one would think, at least since Egyptian. Classical Syriac (Aramaic) has qentron, qantron(?), which is thought to be a related loan, and the q (ܩ 'qoph') does imply to this Semitic novice a sound quite different from /k/.
Centrum is commonly thought to be a loan from Greek, and kentrom would typically reconstruct a voiceless palatal velar, whereas gen- reconstructs a voiced palatal, thus AGr. genos and kentrom cannot be cognate in the traditional theory under the assumption that both words are inherited. The assumption is myopic though, because Ancient Greek is known to have a lot of external influence and kentron itself has too few cognates to establish heritage with any amount of significant probability. It may therefore be an open question, if it was a loan word, where it came from. Although the question would appear fatuous if the semantic distance is easy to bridge that first looks implausible from AGr. "spike" to Lat. "middle" but looks more plausible if cast as "pointed tool" and "middle (of a circle" (eg. via maths, if you can imagine it). It is all the more ridiculous to go so far before "gentrification" was coined--rather recently, I presume. Yet it makes sense to contrast gentry with the peasents, and pitch fork with the ruling stem or tribe. On a rather theoretical level it is at the very least not implausible to hask for each of the roots individual internal derivation, but I'll spare you the rest which invariable devolves into world-conspiracy theory at the latest when Semitic is involved, much worse in fact when racisim was the topic, while I'm sure a more trivial argument can explain why "something with a sharp point" had to be borrowed into languages so diverse as Latin, Aramaic, Georgian, Armenian, whereas my information basis is too poor and thus biased to see ghosts in the noise, such a trade marked compass needle cartell.
Nevertheless I hope you (and Maybe McWorther if he should read this thread with interest) can appreciate the ironic saecasm that, if I was into something, then gentrification would in effect protest the centrification of the city centre. That's literally circular reasoning.
The idea that city centres are Haram (forbidden, holy, thus also Harem) is quite old actually. I think that's what we are looking at in the abstract, although in the conclusion it seems more like the industrialisation and beaurocratization of the home stead. It is a self similar problem, because it may lead to urbanization of the outer rim, and thus the gentrification of villages, which I have experienced in my own time, though to a profitable effect so far. The flip side is desertification and geront- (oficitation?) of rural areas, "Landflucht", when the youth looking for work flees to the city. Migration is topical on a global scale of course, and racism plays a huge role in that topic no doubt, be it in Texas, the Mediteranean, China, or Dubai (where the term "wage slavery" is no hyperbole, and nepotism the name of the game, I suppose), the list goes on and on. So you have to consider aglomeration between world cities, too, which is what I mean with self similarity.
In result it--whatever it really is--is a problem so complex I cannot disagree about racism not being the root cause, despite the copious evidence in the word root itself.
But I do disagree that it is about money, which is only symbolic and begets the question what it symbolized, if not the head figures depicted on the obverse. I do think cost is a more relevant term (a homophone and either way not totally secure; rhymes with caste if you mumble, and with κεστός "girdle, belt; stitched, embroidery" which is a cognate to kentron, haha, I could go on all day).
[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
>We need not wonder what the basic objections will be: Third Wave Antiracism isn’t really a religion; I am oversimplifying; I shouldn’t write this without being a theologian; it is a religion but it’s a good one; and so on.
Yet here he is saying it's not a religion. I believe his thoughts on this issue are still being developed or he is trying to understand.
That's really the big mistake Sam Harris and he was making in the original assertion that this is a religion. There will be more Jedi religion than people in this antiracism religion.
>It is not an argument against protest. I am not arguing against the basic premises of Black Lives Matter, although I have had my differences with some of its offshoot developments.
This is what he misses. His problem is with BLM. His problem should also be with the police and social oppression from the police and governments.
What John seems to be missing is that it's not religion at all. It's politics. It's the same reason why BLM will get absolutely nothing from the democrats.
>One more thing: We need a crisper label for the problematic folk. I will not title them “Social Justice Warriors.” That, and other labels such as “the Woke Mob” are unsuitably dismissive.
Also terms that aren't quite accurate. When you get to the bottom of where this anti-racism comes from and their goals. You know exactly what they are. This political movement died in 1989 but hasn't quite finished dying.
>“The Elect” is also good in implying a certain smugness, which is sadly accurate as a depiction. Of course, most of them will resist the charge.
Terrible name that won't work with anyone. They already have multiple names. They rebrand constantly because they are a dead political movement. Giving them a new name is pointless.
http://www.socialistaction.net/2020/06/09/marxism-and-the-an...
He’s explicitly listing objections that he expects to hear, not contradicting himself.
I misunderstood. My mistake.
I have a conspiracy theory that nation state troll armies have been working tirelessly behind the scenes, gently prodding discussions in order to recast bog standard democratic concepts like "social justice," "free speech," "anti-racism," and "journalism" in as negative a light as possible. (Hell, Uber has somehow been able to create a whole genre of Taxi Medallion Horror Stories, so it can't be rocket science.)
Otherwise, the obvious, reasonable, and typical course of action here would be to call out the twitter morons who claim white people are racist for breathing as "twitter morons," and reserve the term "anti-racism" and "third wave anti-racism" for 21st century versions of actually fighting racism.
E.g., "Donovan Mitchell practiced third-wave anti-racism on Sunday by using his platform on Twitter to call out parents at a Utah charter school who want their children to be able to opt-out of Black History Month."
Systemic racism is real, but if you're just looking at Twitter and headlines you'll never pierce the insight that its anonymous network of individual behaviors that, at scale, have real effects; this is no different than thinking about the economy, which we're perfectly comfortable with as a reification of the tremendous graph of individual behaviors.
1. Affirmative action
2. Minimum wage
3. Contract awards based on various mbe’s dbe’s or whatever else.
4. University college selection
Are these the things being discussed as systemic racism, where codified laws are in place as a system, if not, please point to where else it occurs.
Is this the output of one of those new GPT algos? Or is it just a markov chain trained on snippets of reason.com articles?