> You’d deny there are a significant number of people who believe three, for example?
"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.
"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.
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.
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.