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John McWhorter: The Neoracists

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#81

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

stncls wrote: post #67
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…

Indeed the strawman is so huge it is tempting to translate the purported 10-tenet list into what reasonable people may actually believe. > 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, u…

Point 2 is almost surely a reference to a famous incident where the African-American History Museum published a chart which identified things like hard work, self-reliance, and planning for the future as aspects of "white culture". (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...)

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#82

Post by jimbokun »

lisper wrote: post #48
peytn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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. Ac…

Yes, I read the whole article. And yes, I agree that "Actual progress on racism [is] orthogonal to what the author was talking about." But that's not what I'm critiquing. I'm critiquing his premise , that this thing he calls "third wave anti-racism" and whose characteristics he describes in his ten-point characterization is actually representative of the views of people who are concerned about racism today. I don't b…

> and whose characteristics he describes in his ten-point characterization is actually representative of the views of people who are concerned about racism today.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#83

Post by ceilingcorner »

dragonwriter wrote: post #60
ceilingcorner wrote: post #34

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 m…

> 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 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 thei…

I wasn’t intending to stereotype Protestants at all. But I think it’s not a controversial thing to say that American Protestantism in particular has some very unique aspects, especially in comparison to say, German Protestantism. Just off the top of my head, Puritanism, Prosperity theology, and Mormonism all strike me as very American phenomena. If you look at them from a certain angle, the first two have nearly identical value systems to contemporary Silicon Valley, with the content of the belief being slightly different.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#84

Post by omginternets »

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.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#85

Post by runako »

aww_dang wrote: post #57
newacct583 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's about right. And there's a more market-based take on this: McWhorter politics audience is swelling at the moment and he's trying to take advantage. There are a lot of broadly intellectual para-conservatives right now feeling cast out of the conventional conservative media environment (occupied as it is with fighting a civil war between the MAGA insurgents and traditional republicans). This site, in par…

Two passages jumped out at me as relevant not just generally, but potentially valuable to wokeists here at HN. >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…

> “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.”

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#86

Post by manfredo »

widdershins wrote: post #25
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…

They say that black people are killed by police in disproportionate numbers, and are incarcerated in similarly disproportionate numbers. https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

Disproportionate relative to the general population. It is proportionate relative to the rates of violent crime committed.

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?

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#87

Post by dolni »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #32
minikites wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because it is so easy to tell lies with statistics, I think that personal experiences are a good way to gauge the validity of what is being conveyed.

But one also has to understand that their personal experience is not the sum total of experiences.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#89

Post by lisper »

hn8788 wrote: post #63
lisper wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

So you admit that you're completely ignorant on the subject, yet claim with certainty that the article can't be true? People like you are part of the problem. These topics can't even be discussed without people jumping to discredit things they know nothing about.

No, I admit I am partially ignorant. Twitter is not the entirety of reality, notwithstanding that some people seem to think that it is. If third-wave anti-racism were really widespread I would expect to see evidence of it somewhere other than Twitter, and I don't.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#90

Post by sleepysysadmin »

I've watched a number of his videos where he talks about the new religion of anti-racism. He is tremendously eloquent and intelligent.

>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...

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