No - whether you like it or not, it is neither dim nor racist to generalize on the basis of widespread and frequent events (i.e. both cop killings and Elect abuses).
While all of McWhorter's work is high octane, THIS piece contains weapons-grade material for fighting back against Electness, on both the strategic and tactical levels. Coining the term "Anecdata" is a perspicuous move, one that captures the confusing, convoluted sophistry employed by the Elect. The reason such people so often get away with it is that casuistry and logical fallacies, despite being relatively easy to IDENTIFY, require more time, effort, and intellect to EXPLAIN than our attention-deficit media and culture affords.
Conservative charlatans capitalized on this for decades, and it disgusts me to see the Left afflicted with such intellectual sepsis, descending into stage IV terminal Sophistry with comorbidities of metastaic Trump Derangement Syndrome and viral Wokeness. Intellectual epidemiologists will probably someday identify social media as the vector of transmission that precipitated the deleterious spread of the infection.
"[Richard Russell, arch-racist Georgia senator] ... revived and taken on a trip through the nation and then forced to watch just an hour of what is on line would find themselves retching at how truly and deeply black people and blackness have permeated this society on all levels, in all ways since the 1960s."
For me, this is among your most powerful lines of thought on the subject. These thought experiments ground me, and give me the opportunity to reflect and be thankful because it is within my control to treat with people with respect and dignity in a way that Richard Russell would not have. I feel empowered by your comments. To do good.
I'm reminded of comments you made to Reason during your 2019 interview. Something like "No-one would choose to be 350 lbs. and white over being healthy and black in 2019. Everyone would have chosen that in 1850, maybe even 1910." Another grounding example that puts the agency back in the reader's hands, and focuses them onto forces that are under their control. Thanks for the insight, and keep it up.
Re anecdotes vs general phenomena. I think the best we can reasonably hope for in everydayife, as kahneman and tvesrsky would put it, is to see others' biases, not our own.
Start with your friends, and encourage them to be open with you. Write down your opinions and view them months later and see h
When people react to a reasoned position they fail to enhance communication. And then when the person presenting reasoned thought is buffeted by blustery further reaction it becomes clear to me that the reactors ought to do their personal anger work! Some people have failed to take the maturity path that includes emotional growth which leads to our blessed end goal of "I am GOOD ENOUGH". Those people who don't feel good enough about themselves want to take out their anger on whoever they can dump their poopy, angry diapers. They will not succeed in personal relationships. Your spouse and, God forbid, your children will hate your guts if you don't grow up! Imagine what could be accomplished in this Nation, regarding social justice, if there was more collaboration and less intimidation whipper snappers!
Since I appreciate your writing, Professor Mc Whorter, I wanted to mention that your use of the term ‘The Elect,’ if I understand it, Is intended to avoid meaner epithets, but it remains, I think , still too mean, the irony of the word, contempt inheres in it— I fear it is a dialogue stopper. But to give up on dialogue, and vent to each other, which can be heartening! —I do fear that may be a dead end. But where is the partner for dialogue? Somewhere, we have to believe, people on this track can out grow it, be persuaded, while others can be persuaded that these cancel type injustices must be resisted. It is scary.....It seems urgent for you to make the best case against this ongoing madness... . I so agree your voice matters in this, and this kind of intolerance, illiberality is not just applied to race but to obnoxious ideas on the right,—on a near campus right wing speech was blocked by students....I understand political disgust—but the concept of free speech is not respected by some indignant students. So, the elect. The Woke. Maybe The Woke. The reborn. I think of Calvinists who never knew if they were elected. Lived in anxiety. Self anointed elect is a contradiction, but there are those who would wage religious war...
This piece brings to mind a recent interaction I had with a few of my friends (well-meaning, white, dues-paying members of The Elect, to be sure). Innocently enough, while discussing emerging evidence that Vitamin D deficiency may be correlated with severe Covid outcomes, I mentioned that darker skinned people require significantly more sun exposure than lighter skinned people to synthesize the necessary levels of Vitamin D. Instantly, before I had even managed to finish the sentence and absent any mention of Black people specifically, my friends scoffed and said, "Fran, Black people are dying because of medical racism." End of conversation, as if it wasn't even worth mentioning a concrete scientific reality in the face of the all-encompassing trump card of medical racism.
This isn't to say that medical care disparities don't exist along racial lines, but to John's point, the evidence that Vitamin D deficiency 1) may be more prevalent among Black people than among white people (yes, because of the respective colors of our skin), and 2) may have a non-zero impact on Covid severity and mortality, does not support the prevailing narrative, and is thus not worthy of discussion. It's "anecdata" if it doesn't align with the pseudo-religious dogma du jour, even if it presents serious questions about how we prevent and treat disease in groups that are suffering disproportionately.
I propose racism is a symptom of addiction to wealth and appearance, manifesting in oppression. Those whites who choose to actively sustain it and those who act with Indifference to sustain oppression are the action figures with a mentality of poverty, in spite of enormous wealth, at times.
Childhood trauma, unattended, will have devastating affects. When white people, who show up as oppressors, deny that they suffer the mental illness of addiction there is national harm done. My city, Columbia, Mo. is in the historic mid Missouri area called "Little Dixie" because plantation owners from Kentucky and Tennessee transplanted their oppressive means of prospering with slave bondage going back 200 years. Our recent white re-write of history depicts everybody smilin'. There's no joy about generational poverty caused by our "urban renewal" land grab coupled with redlining. Don't come back now Jesus, in a mortal body. They'd murder you again, i believe.
John’s mighty pen versus the philistine Elect sword: outcome uncertain.
While all of McWhorter's work is high octane, THIS piece contains weapons-grade material for fighting back against Electness, on both the strategic and tactical levels. Coining the term "Anecdata" is a perspicuous move, one that captures the confusing, convoluted sophistry employed by the Elect. The reason such people so often get away with it is that casuistry and logical fallacies, despite being relatively easy to IDENTIFY, require more time, effort, and intellect to EXPLAIN than our attention-deficit media and culture affords.
Conservative charlatans capitalized on this for decades, and it disgusts me to see the Left afflicted with such intellectual sepsis, descending into stage IV terminal Sophistry with comorbidities of metastaic Trump Derangement Syndrome and viral Wokeness. Intellectual epidemiologists will probably someday identify social media as the vector of transmission that precipitated the deleterious spread of the infection.
"[Richard Russell, arch-racist Georgia senator] ... revived and taken on a trip through the nation and then forced to watch just an hour of what is on line would find themselves retching at how truly and deeply black people and blackness have permeated this society on all levels, in all ways since the 1960s."
For me, this is among your most powerful lines of thought on the subject. These thought experiments ground me, and give me the opportunity to reflect and be thankful because it is within my control to treat with people with respect and dignity in a way that Richard Russell would not have. I feel empowered by your comments. To do good.
I'm reminded of comments you made to Reason during your 2019 interview. Something like "No-one would choose to be 350 lbs. and white over being healthy and black in 2019. Everyone would have chosen that in 1850, maybe even 1910." Another grounding example that puts the agency back in the reader's hands, and focuses them onto forces that are under their control. Thanks for the insight, and keep it up.
Re anecdotes vs general phenomena. I think the best we can reasonably hope for in everydayife, as kahneman and tvesrsky would put it, is to see others' biases, not our own.
Start with your friends, and encourage them to be open with you. Write down your opinions and view them months later and see h
Politics is Power, a view through any other lens distorts.
The core error of the Enlightenment is that reason is a lever over men.
The levers over men are force and gain.
As for relations: "All we have is a choice between his death or his revenge." - Khrushchev, The Death of Stalin.
Drink more wine to become more reasonable and stop being influenced by whining Rush Limbaugh
When people react to a reasoned position they fail to enhance communication. And then when the person presenting reasoned thought is buffeted by blustery further reaction it becomes clear to me that the reactors ought to do their personal anger work! Some people have failed to take the maturity path that includes emotional growth which leads to our blessed end goal of "I am GOOD ENOUGH". Those people who don't feel good enough about themselves want to take out their anger on whoever they can dump their poopy, angry diapers. They will not succeed in personal relationships. Your spouse and, God forbid, your children will hate your guts if you don't grow up! Imagine what could be accomplished in this Nation, regarding social justice, if there was more collaboration and less intimidation whipper snappers!
Since I appreciate your writing, Professor Mc Whorter, I wanted to mention that your use of the term ‘The Elect,’ if I understand it, Is intended to avoid meaner epithets, but it remains, I think , still too mean, the irony of the word, contempt inheres in it— I fear it is a dialogue stopper. But to give up on dialogue, and vent to each other, which can be heartening! —I do fear that may be a dead end. But where is the partner for dialogue? Somewhere, we have to believe, people on this track can out grow it, be persuaded, while others can be persuaded that these cancel type injustices must be resisted. It is scary.....It seems urgent for you to make the best case against this ongoing madness... . I so agree your voice matters in this, and this kind of intolerance, illiberality is not just applied to race but to obnoxious ideas on the right,—on a near campus right wing speech was blocked by students....I understand political disgust—but the concept of free speech is not respected by some indignant students. So, the elect. The Woke. Maybe The Woke. The reborn. I think of Calvinists who never knew if they were elected. Lived in anxiety. Self anointed elect is a contradiction, but there are those who would wage religious war...
This piece brings to mind a recent interaction I had with a few of my friends (well-meaning, white, dues-paying members of The Elect, to be sure). Innocently enough, while discussing emerging evidence that Vitamin D deficiency may be correlated with severe Covid outcomes, I mentioned that darker skinned people require significantly more sun exposure than lighter skinned people to synthesize the necessary levels of Vitamin D. Instantly, before I had even managed to finish the sentence and absent any mention of Black people specifically, my friends scoffed and said, "Fran, Black people are dying because of medical racism." End of conversation, as if it wasn't even worth mentioning a concrete scientific reality in the face of the all-encompassing trump card of medical racism.
This isn't to say that medical care disparities don't exist along racial lines, but to John's point, the evidence that Vitamin D deficiency 1) may be more prevalent among Black people than among white people (yes, because of the respective colors of our skin), and 2) may have a non-zero impact on Covid severity and mortality, does not support the prevailing narrative, and is thus not worthy of discussion. It's "anecdata" if it doesn't align with the pseudo-religious dogma du jour, even if it presents serious questions about how we prevent and treat disease in groups that are suffering disproportionately.
Thank you for an insightful read, as always.
I propose racism is a symptom of addiction to wealth and appearance, manifesting in oppression. Those whites who choose to actively sustain it and those who act with Indifference to sustain oppression are the action figures with a mentality of poverty, in spite of enormous wealth, at times.
Childhood trauma, unattended, will have devastating affects. When white people, who show up as oppressors, deny that they suffer the mental illness of addiction there is national harm done. My city, Columbia, Mo. is in the historic mid Missouri area called "Little Dixie" because plantation owners from Kentucky and Tennessee transplanted their oppressive means of prospering with slave bondage going back 200 years. Our recent white re-write of history depicts everybody smilin'. There's no joy about generational poverty caused by our "urban renewal" land grab coupled with redlining. Don't come back now Jesus, in a mortal body. They'd murder you again, i believe.