John McWhorter: The Neoracists

Racism is identity politics.

- blogspam

- flame bait (with the obvious caveats)

- excessive reposts

etc.

It just sucks when something like this gets swept up.

On linguistics? I'm willing to assume that for the sake of argument. On racial politics? Given his writing on that issue (and not just the current piece) the generous assumption is “no, not at all, he's just a blowhard that's been given a platform because he can spin a tale that people in power like to hear well”.

Being a “bona fide expert” in a different field plus being black doesn't make you an expert on racial politics/social movements.

There seems to be a belief kicking around that if we could just help minorities in the right way, racism would go away faster.

I don't think this is so. Time after time in US history, the government has tried to institute "helpful" social programs to lift black people up. Time after time, those efforts have failed. Any time that blacks start to build some wealth for themselves, the government comes in to "help" and screws it all up.

Let's look at something like desegregation. Every reasonable person will agree that desegregation needed to happen, but it was rushed and the consequences of it weren't considered like they ought to be.

Black students, many of whom previously went to schools that were less good, were now integrated with racist white students and faculty. So while the "education" part may have been better, they were too concerned with being bullied to actually get a decent education at all. The net result? A poorer education that they would have got at their "worse" black-only school.

Additionally, black-owned businesses were thoroughly destroyed by desegregation. Before desegregating, black business owners had guaranteed business via other black patrons. Afterwards, blacks were free to patronize other businesses when it was convenient, but racist whites at the time still refused to support black business. That ended many black businesses.

The Pruitt-Igoe complex [1] replaced many homes owned by blacks. They thought they were "helping" blacks escape the poor living conditions of their older homes. Instead, they fractured black communities and destroyed the equity they held in their own properties.

A poorly-designed welfare system throughout the 70s and 80s trapped blacks into low-income lifestyles and incentivized fathers not being present at home, which is a significant disadvantage for youths [2].

So here's where this is all going - the government needs to get the fuck out of the way and let black people succeed. We, as society, can and should intervene to stamp out racism _where it is evident_. What you can't do is look at income or incarceration statistics in a vacuum and say "clearly America is still very racist."

There is work to be done, and most people don't dispute that. What is disputed is that fighting racism with racism is an effective strategy. It isn't.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe

[2]: https://www.all4kids.org/news/blog/a-fathers-impact-on-child...

You are kind of denying that there is a meta game. The fastest way to loose is not to play and you are telling people not to play.

Conversely however, the typical sectarian individualist would demand their religious feelings be respected. Answering the demand would of course affect validation. In this context I find your rule is a contradiction in terms.

I'm already playing the meta game. The claim would be much stronger if your religion should not affect how you express yourself. Would be difficult to talk about it then, and so it would fulfil your demand, except that religion would likely not be your religion.

But really, any good programm should terminate. Can we talk about hacking again?