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John McWhorter: The Neoracists

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#31

Post by S_A_P »

Question, because I dont know. Do identity politics help or hurt racism? My knee jerk reaction is that is highlights differences and can cause folks to dig their heels in on issues surrounding race/gender/sexuality/. However pretending that all of these sorts of differences dont exist seems a bit naive at best and boneheaded at worst.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#32

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

minikites wrote: post #11
beaner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely statistics might help us resolve to what extent things like public torture and killing of black people by authorities is a problem (as distinct from police brutality against all people generally). What do the statistics say? 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 wh…

What leads you to believe the statistics are gathered and reported accurately?

I'm very open to specific critiques of specific statistics. Data collection and aggregation are hard problems!

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#33

Post by olivierlacan »

I'd recommend reading Ibram X. Kendi's counter to another piece by McWorther which demonstrates similar straw man rhetoric (pointed out by lisper) as this piece: agglomerating disparate positions from hundreds of people and pointing to a lack of internal consistency in such disparate points of view.

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...

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#34

Post by ceilingcorner »

Religion has no place in the classroom, in the halls of ivy, in our codes of ethics, or in deciding how we express ourselves, and almost all of us spontaneously understand that and see any misunderstanding of the premise as backward. Yet since about 2015, a peculiar contingent has been slowly headlocking us into making an exception, supposing that this new religion is so incontestably good, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence.

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.

1. https://youtu.be/TWoRVaGlFRc

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#35

Post by lisper »

macinjosh wrote: post #21
lisper wrote: post #2

It is important to note that this article was written by a black man, a contributing editor to The Atlantic. John McWhorter is not a MAGA hack. 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 b…

> Absolutely no one subscribes to the position it critiques. 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 th…

> Have you been on Twitter or a college campus lately?

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?

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#36

Post by pjkundert »

seibelj wrote: post #5

Eventually people will realize that the best way to treat others is identically no matter the color of their skin. That used to be an uncontroversial viewpoint but it’s dangerous to say that now!

The idea that a claim of group membership can be used to categorize a person, and then be used as a rationale for group punishment (eg. deplatforming) is repulsive and silly.

And is now widely accepted as "woke" and generally accepted as correct behavior.

This isn't going to end as pleasantly as proponents expect.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#37

Post by js2 »

briane80 wrote: post #9
lisper wrote: post #2

It is important to note that this article was written by a black man, a contributing editor to The Atlantic. John McWhorter is not a MAGA hack. 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 b…

"black people being systematically disenfranchised, and publicly tortured and killed by authorities, often with impunity" And it's ridiculous statements like this that keep fanning the racial tensions. 1) Please show the data - if you even took time to review police killings it is social class that is the biggest factor not race. In fact as a percentage white people of lower income status are killed more often than b…

The wealth disparity between Black people and white people in America[1] is, itself, due to centuries of racism[2].

1. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...

2. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08...

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#39

Post by caturopath »

I don't fully align with McWhorter's take on these issues, but it's nice to see someone take a somewhat measured approach in stating their opposition, rather than living in some pretend world where woke zombies are shambling out of our college campuses and destroying everything.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#40

Post by dragonwriter »

S_A_P wrote: post #31

Question, because I dont know. Do identity politics help or hurt racism? My knee jerk reaction is that is highlights differences and can cause folks to dig their heels in on issues surrounding race/gender/sexuality/ . However pretending that all of these sorts of differences dont exist seems a bit naive at best and boneheaded at worst. What is the path forward? How do you integrate different races/cultures/etc in a t…

> Do identity politics help or hurt racism?

“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”.

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