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John McWhorter: The Neoracists

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191–200 of 261 posts

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#191
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…

> John McWhorter is not a MAGA hack. From reading the piece, he seems more of a Friedman/Brooks hack (much more common in the mainstream media), but still a hack. > This article is the very definition of a straw man. Absolutely no one subscribes to the position it critiques. McWhorter seems to be really keen (not just in this piece) on adapting the old and problematic waves of feminism model and applying it, badly an…

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#192

Opportunistic people have realized by now that it's better to join this movement than to risk appearing to oppose it. Corporations have created new positions and new departments to seem like they're part of this movement. In our forever-online, forever-catalogued, hyperconnected world, people are smart to recognize shame as an existential threat, and movements are smart to recognize shame as the ultimate weapon. If w…

> Corporations have created new positions and new departments to seem like they're part of this movement.

That trend seems to be shifting. Google was one of the first to accept the movement, and yet they very publicly stood up to it when they accepted Timnit Gebru's threat to resign.

> If we suppose that outside opposition will harden the movement

Hardening isn't the same as strengthening. The "harder", more extreme, more authoritarian the movement becomes, the more it will drive people away, and opportunists who only joined out of expediency or fear won't defend it when it's seriously challenged.

I don't think we'll have to wait a generation for this movement to end, just as it didn't take a generation for its closest recent analogue, McCarthyism, to end.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#193
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…

An enormous amount of "being against identity politics" is itself identity politics. The most blatant example is "all lives matter", a deliberate misunderstanding of what "black lives matter" means. It's white identity politics, predicated on the assumption that whiteness is the default for human beings, and so anything that addresses issues that don't apply to them is ipso facto racist.

I interpret accusations of "identity politics" as, most of the time, playing identity politics itself. It just gets to assume that their identity, as the default identity, can't be identity politics.

The way forward is difficult, because these are thorny and deeply linked issues. But they're not made any easier by demands that we erase any dicussion of race from discussions of racism. What is clear about the way forward is that it starts by listening to what people say about racism rather than assume that our experience accurately reflects what happens to people.

If you're getting "shut down" because you're telling black people what happens to black people, maybe you could imagine that they feel that you've been canceling them -- and feel entitled to do so.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#194
post #177
post #114

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 “div…

> 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. 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.…

> 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....

> 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.

One problem with this line of argument is that it is often advanced in bad faith by people whose actual goal is to avoid addressing the problem at all.

Another problem with the "do nothing and let it work itself on its own" approach is that it goes against many conceptions of justice. If you repeatedly stole money from me, most people wouldn't consider the matter settled if you got to keep what you stole and were merely prevented from stealing yet more in the future: justice requires at least some effort to repair the past damage, even though those efforts usually quite imperfect (e.g. monetary compensation for wrongful death).

I would guess that a significant contributor to the problems you outlined was an unwillingness to go the full measure to address the problems, often for illegitimate reasons (e.g. racists maintained enough power to block all but half-ass solutions) or legitimate ones (e.g. enough time passed that the direct perpetrators and victims are dead, but unjust effects nevertheless linger).

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#195
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N word is a well known example of racist speech/action and social media is often where these uses are drug up and litigated. But I don't use my identity as a white male to paint myself a victim, so maybe I'm off base? Are there other avenues where these previously non-racists were bullied into becoming racists?

That is a sentence that contains words I wouldn't dispute. I still fail to connect it to the original post in any way.

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Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#196
Why does the list sound like a caricatures? I don’t actually believe any of these are common or normal views.

Even taking the points apart, the two halve don’t seem realistic even in isolation but more like if someone took an intentional misunderstanding of what people actually say, and then further took the misunderstanding down a slippery slope.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> McWhorter is both a bona-fide expert 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…

How many books does one have to put out on a subject before you decide they can be called an expert? ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/17151107.John_McWhorte... ) John McWhorter (and Glen Loury) have hosted a podcast for 14 years on the issue of race in America. You may not like what they have to say, but to say they aren't 'qualified' is ridiculous and it denigrates their work. They are as capable of lending i…

I don't know if John McWhorter is an expert on racial politics. I do know having opinions and a platform isn't the same thing.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#198
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…

I have the same point view as you. Can someone show non-fringe like credible examples of any of the 10 points?

And it seems obvious that even if people magically had no more racists thoughts or decisions starting in 2021, as if a side effect of COVID was ending racist beliefs, the intergenerational effects would mean the effects of racism would continually disadvantage large swathes of people. As a society, we should work to reduce the impact of past mistakes, should we not?

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#199
post #140
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To update you with an actual source on some of the points, you can start with Robin DiAngelo's book "White Fragility". Most of the points are argued in the book. DiAngelo's books have been many weeks on the NYT's best seller lists. She sells her diversity training courses to many Fortune 500 companies and is held in high regards in progressive circles. You can get a quick overview of the book's ideas on wikipedia ( h…

> you will find many stories that fit into the 10 points I don't doubt that. In a nation of 300+ million you can find someone who believes just about anything. But it's still a very long way from there to the conclusions that the conjunction of those ten points is a mainstream point of view, which is what McWhorter claims. Nonetheless, thanks for the references and the considered response.

Glad you found the reply helpful.

Regarding "but is it really mainstream": Difficult question. I believe the answer is a "yes" with many caveats and clarifications.

How to define "mainstream"? Maybe your definition is "among the entire US population, less than 10 % believe the 10-points" or something similar. I think McWhorter has another frame of reference: (non-right wing) media, (higher) education, (non-right wing) politics and a subset of economical organisations (think Silicon Valley). Within these organisations, you should not be surprised to witness an adherence to at least some of the 10-points, and receive punishment if you loudly oppose them.

A recent data point: The New York Times has fired an acclaimed science reporter (specialized on COVID, nonetheless), because in 2019 he dared to utter the N-word in the following context: A student asked him for an example of egretious racism, to which he replied with saying "If somebody said the N-word". He dared to utter the word actually, leading to the recent events (https://quillette.com/2021/02/09/with-a-star-science-reporte...). Just like in Harry Potter, the mere utterance of a word has magic effects. To me, this is literally a regression to the Dark Ages. The word is the thing, saying it out loud stirrs the evil.

Of course this is just one anecdote, but there are many similar anecdotes. At which point does it become a trend? Here it becomes important to note that there is no need for a majority to command social change. Instead, small but determined minorities are extremely successful in getting what they want. The mechanics behind that are currently a hot topic of debate (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...).

However, the important takeaway is that critical race theory ("white fragility") is not the only "this cannot be real" movement taking hold of universities, social media, established media outlets and politics. In places of higher education you may find yourself drastically punished if you insist that sex has a biological basis, that vocational interests are not evenly distributed between genders, that the American Civil War indeed aimed at freeing slaves, or that hiring decisions should be primarily based on merit of the applicants.

From your other comments I gathered that you are relatively new to "this", whatever this is. I suppose your priors were calibrated in a time certain tenets of humanism such as the value of truth, rationality and the universality of human experience were common place, especiall among the left. The tectonic shift we are witnessing today is that these tenets are declared to be false and even imoral, and that the proponents of such views are gaining the upper hand. I will sound dramatic, but I fear that the progress won by the period of enlightenment is in grave danger.

I probably have not convinced you that what I am saying is actually happening, but that's ok. This would take a longer discussion, there is a lot to unpack here. Perhaps you can consider it as a possibility, and adjust your priors for future events.

Re: John McWhorter: The Neoracists

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see 10 tenets that are extremely disagreeable posed as a mainstream ideology, and as far as I can tell, he just made them up. So he can fuck off, imo. I don't especially like Kendi. Here's what he says about kendi in the article though. > Ibram X. Kendi has written a book on how to raise antiracist children called Antiracist Baby. ... That's it. He says he wrote a book called Antiracist Baby. That name drop does no…

At work, there are emails going around that list all of those tenets. How to apologize, how one should not speak unless one is "appropriately diverse," how one should believe in their own guilt or victim-hood. This email (unofficial) has the title "How to Be Antiracist." The only thing McWhorter did was to reorder the bullets, putting some next to each other. None of those are made up. The very next sentences after y…

> This email (unofficial) has the title "How to Be Antiracist." The only thing McWhorter did was to reorder the bullets, putting some next to each other.

> None of those are made up.

By definition they are made up. The question is by whom. I cannot find these tenets by googling them. The first link to "third wave antiracist tenets" is this very article. The fact that someone sent you an email is pretty irrelevant, and frankly dubious. I'm open to being proven wrong, but if these aren't published by a noteworthy source, they're utterly irrelevant. I don't like Kendi. I think his work is opportunistic and stuck in semantics. But I don't think he's going to write dumb shit like what the author anchors everyone on baselessly. And even if he did, I feel confident that 99% of americans would say they're not accurate portrayals of their views.

edit: on a reread, it sounds like you're saying there's just a separate email with different content. Just because this author uses the words "antiracist" doesn't mean his portrayal of another person's portrayal of the word are the same, or that either are salient.

> The very next sentences after your quote discusses the book. The next paragraph also says this:

The quote you provided contains literally nothing from the book, just him doubling down that he doesn't like it.

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