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John McWhorter: The Neoracists

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#111

Post by codekansas »

lisper wrote: post #75
peytn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. I’m on a college campus in the United States right now, and I can confirm what he describes exists here exactly as he describes it. There may be a generational or geographical gap between our experiences.

OK, I'll take your word for it. But I have a hard time imagining what that experience could even look like . I mean, do people go around quizzing each other on their anti-racist credentials? In my world, this doesn't even come up in day-to-day conversation. The only reason it's on my radar screen at all is that I wrote a blog post about it a few months ago that ended up blowing up in my face.

I don't know about quizzing each other, but when my youngest sibling, an unemployed community college dropout, got super involved in the Portland antiracist scene, to the point that they stopped talking to our family (because we represent white oppression, basically what the author described) it has been really rough to see our love for them weaponized to push this particular cult. Having a family member join a cult doesn't make day-to-day problems (they don't even speak to us anymore), but that doesn't mean it's not a major social trend

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#112

Post by mam2 »

From a european perspective there is currently no nation more divided that the USA in terms of culture and 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... 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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#113

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ziroshima wrote: post #10
minikites wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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.

Some people may think that racism ended, but I don't think most do. In fact, I'd say this is a 'straw man', to quote the parent. I think the problem people have is seeing racism enacted to combat racism, which is just going to result in a feedback loop producing more racism, tribalism, and division.

Hmm. The current approach of "combating racism" (quotas, preferences, "white fragility", etc.) almost has to produce tribalism, which, since it's tribalism on the axis of race, will almost certainly produce more racism down the road. Once you put it that way, it seems almost inevitable.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#114

Post by ardy42 »

The OP was flagged to death yesterday, and this is an attempt to recreate a comment I couldn't submit.

> 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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#115

Post by minikites »

ziroshima wrote: post #10
minikites wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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.

Some people may think that racism ended, but I don't think most do. In fact, I'd say this is a 'straw man', to quote the parent. I think the problem people have is seeing racism enacted to combat racism, which is just going to result in a feedback loop producing more racism, tribalism, and division.

Do you remember how many people got upset when a black man knelt for the national anthem at a football game? Lots of people definitely think racism is over.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#116

Post by aww_dang »

cccc4alll wrote: post #28
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…

The lower classes fight amongst themselves, while the establishment gets richer every second. 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.

Some have theorized along this line by suggesting that the id politics movement switched into overdrive after Occupy Wall Street. Although they had different analyses, both the left and the free market right were aligned against crony capitalism.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#117

Post by runako »

aww_dang wrote: post #102
runako wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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, w…

In my reading of the article, (not sure if you've had the pleasure) McWharton was describing the caricature that is presented in pop culture. Yes, I find the savior complex condescending and dismissive of individual agency.

I got that but the problem is that caricature is only presented in some views of pop culture. The Obamas, Kamala Harris, Beyonce, Viola Davis, and Chadwick Boseman are pop culture.

Anyone who chooses to present the pop culture caricature described by McWhorter is making a racially-guided editorial decision.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#118

Post by omginternets »

lisper wrote: post #110
omginternets wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the point. You're already ignoring the ones FTA.

There are two references in the TFA. Both of them are books. I haven't read them, so I will concede that these two books endorse the point of view being described. 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.

>I haven't read them, so I will concede that these two books endorse the point of view being described.

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.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#119

Post by jancsika »

> Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself

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."

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#120

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #68

>This is directly antithetical to the very foundations of the American experiment. 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, su…

[deleted]
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