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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I kinda feel bad for John McWhorter. On Twitter, he gets attacked as a sell-out to his race (including by white people!) for strongly holding what are basically widely held center-left positions. It's thankless work.

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I wouldn't feel too bad. McWhorter has deliberately picked the fights he's in (see for instance his longstanding feud with Ta-Nehisi Coates) and deliberately associated with IDW-types specifically, I think, to troll leftists. It's too bad, because I think he's got a lot of important stuff to say about figures like Ibram X Kendi.

(Like I said, I think McWhorter is worth paying attention to. Also, he has one of the great podcasts.)

>deliberately associated with IDW-types specifically, I think, to troll leftists.

Huh? It seems like McWhorter genuinely has a lot of intellectual overlap with "IDW-types". McWhorter himself is often considered an "IDW-type" himself, no? Why should his association be remotely surprising?

Why should the existence of a feud with TNC be intrinsically concerning? Are feuds intrinsically concerning? Or is TNC simply beyond reproach?

You are arguing from a radically different premise than I am; I didn't say Ta-Nehisi Coates was above reproach, or that there was anything intrinsically wrong with feuding with him. I think if we're this far apart to begin with, it's probably not going to be especially productive to try to hash things out further.

I agree it doesn't help his cause. But I can totally empathize about his feud with TNC. It sticks in my craw when progressive asians claim the mantle of being asian, while pushing views that are in the minority among asians. My reaction is always "yeah, but what would your dad say?" I quite relate to this one of McWhorter's tweets: https://twitter.com/JohnHMcWhorter/status/112988149829800345....

IDW - Intellectual Dark Web

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