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John’s mighty pen versus the philistine Elect sword: outcome uncertain.

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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.

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Delicious

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"[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.

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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

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...and see how they look in hindsight.

The other path is seeking out better evidence and tools (studies, statistical analysis, experts), but one's own biases don't make this a trivial task to do well, either.

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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.

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Reason has leverage over me.

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Can reason feed you? If you are starving this will matter.

Can reason enrich you if you are vulnerable to riches?

Can reason kill you, or save your life from killers?

Finally what 'reason' do you see in the situation described by Dr Mcwhoter, or 2020, or today? What triumphs? Reason? Is a man a woman?

Is a woman a man who gets pregnant?

Reason and it's siren song are why the conservatives conserved nothing, not even sanity.

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Absolutely. Reason has provided my livelihood, and a great deal of my recreation as well.

It is an error of the enlightenment to think nothing else matters in human affairs. But it is also an error for the cynic or postmodernist to think reason plays no role in human psychology (to say nothing of nature).

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I think reason is a problem solving tool.

What's reasonable depends on who's in charge.

Look up, read the good Doctor. Show me reason.

Now power has it's reasons, as I said The Magic Black Man has morphed into Magical Black Skin, and there's a reason: On this Holy Skin must be written a Dread Warrant, nothing less than invoking the Divine will do:

The Dread Warrant Written on the Holy Melanin Skin Scroll: Erase Whiteness.

Of course there's reason being used !

Power needs a Dread Warrant, it gets a Sacred Object of Holy Skin Parchment: To Erase Whiteness.

If it works problem solved. Problem being uppity whites are in the way.

We can't escape our Christian Past even with post-Christianity.

Now instead of stone tablets and crosses we have Holy Melanin.

Nothing new here in Human history except the details of course.

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One task of reason, in institutional design, is engineering protection of important values against the raw exercise of power, or the raw pull of gains.

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Drink more wine to become more reasonable and stop being influenced by whining Rush Limbaugh

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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!

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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...

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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.

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I too have had multiple of these sorts of conversations--positing that there could be some cause other than systemic something-ism behind disparities or tragic events, and being met with an instant, "No, it's systemic something-ism" and an unwillingness to continue the conversation.

It is deeply frustrating, because these are generally issues I care greatly about, and none of them will be solved if we cannot rationally discuss what is occurring and what might be behind it. If police brutality is not caused by racial animus (as I understand it the data we have would suggest that 'white supremacy causes police brutality' is a shaky hypothesis), then all the racial sensitivity training in the world won't do anything to solve it. If one of the drivers of income inequality is class discrimination and not racial discrimination (which seems at least plausible, looking at the success at various sub-categories of African-descended groups), then affirmative action isn't going to do anything to help the truly disprivileged, and will simply perpetuate the status quo with a veneer of superficial diversity. And on, and on, and on.

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White supremacy (as defined by The Elect) is a difficult root cause to address because there really isn't a "solution," per se, except ones of the kind that people like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi advocate (i.e., mass white self-flagellation, Cultural Revolution-style reeducation, and Orwellian ministries, with a healthy dose of paternalism directed at Blacks). It's one of those abstractions that a heavy hand can apply to almost any social problem (medical racism, police brutality, food deserts, etc.), but it also conveniently and necessarily precludes investigation into possible remedies.

I'm by no means saying that Vitamin D supplements are a panacea for the tragic and disastrous effects of the pandemic on Black and brown communities, but it IS deeply frustrating when the mere discussion is too subversive for the delicate ears of the Third Wave Antiracists, especially ones who run in social groups with people like me (educated, white, wealthy, and about as insulated as one can get from being affected by Covid). It's so sad to see people that I ostensibly respect give up their ability to think critically in favor of this Puritanical ideology out of fear of offending. The way I see it, it's better to offend while attempting to address the root causes of these issues than to politely allow them to get worse.

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Myopia kills. I suspect all Black people will want to know about the Vitamin D matter. Talk about withholding potentially life-saving information. It is a type of social warrior malpractice to dismiss potential nonsocial reasons for DEATH. I do think it is wise, and correct, to not dismiss medical racism as a contributing factor. There exist programmatic efforts aimed at recruiting Black folks into medical research studies to assess possible differences in biological predispositions in general, but its a tough to recruit due to mistrust of medical researchers. Black doctors bear a special responsibility in this regard (all researchers do, but I think especially Black doctors). Some have taken up the torch. I think there is a way to broach an important subject such as this "Yes, medical racism is there, but you know what else they found??? Vitamin D for all. Have you had your Vitamin D checked" The Vitamin D is important for everyone. The irony is that by avoiding the conversation about darker skinned people needing more supplementation, so as not to seem racist, a heinous form of racism is being committed. Omission of essential information.

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I've had experience with a similar mind-set, but in a different context. I am no climate change denier and not only believe the science that the planet is warming, but also that it is caused by human activity. Now, when I speak to my like-minded (in the sense of being concerned) relatives about it, I'm accused of being in denial about climate change because I've noted, for instance, that the incidence and severity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic cannot be linked scientifically to human activity. And I'm not rendering my personal opinion, but the apparent consensus of climate scientists on the matter (and I'm certainly open to that opinion changing if the science so warrants). But, since the media reportage on hurricanes, droughts, floods, and other severe weather always rests upon the explicit observation that these events are caused, or at least exacerbated, by climate change, any nuanced take on incidence and severity is treated as apostasy. And the same dynamic is at work amongst those I know who are The Elect, or at least Elect-adjacent. I think this is more a manifestation of intellectual laziness than anything else. Why bother to "interrogate" the complexities of climate change, or the claims of critical race theory, when media outlets have done all the work for you? The problem is that they don't do the necessary work and are either commercially or ideologically invested in a narrative that is simple, reductive and totalizing. Thanks to people like John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, there are outlets where these ideas can be dissected and discussed. The shame is that too few who espouse viewpoints are unwilling to avail themselves of the readily available resources that would at least encourage critical thinking on these matters.

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I have heard these kinds of conversations myself, where any attempt to insert any kind of information that is strictly logical or empirical is blown back by an ideological generalization that can’t be dissected.

Ironically, if the disparities in COVID outcomes were partly attributable to Vitamin D, that would be great news, because a cheap, over-the-counter vitamins, or just fortified milk, could be promoted along with mask wearing and distancing as ways to combat the virus. But those behind the ideological smokescreen do not care sufficiently about helping people or about really thinking hard about what does.

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Much of what The Elect has taught us is to swallow any identity difference as explained by the corresponding -ism, end of story. It's troubling and childish. There are going to be ever so slight differences, people generalize/model to simplify this complex world and most of us can get to a point where we don't care/emphasize the differences between us, but celebrate them as diversity and respect the humanity of each individual. It's how I choose to live and I refuse to live otherwise.

This may be a little preachy from me, my apologies. :) Thanks for the story.

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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.

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If I understand John McWorther correctly, the main issue is that we focus our perspective of the past mostly on the parts, where a certain tone of rejection and disgust about unspeakable crimes is justified and mandatory. This neither good nor bad, it is a necessary task to think about the past as a problem of moral choices. Moral reasoning is good, it is at least better as the absence of it.

The great step forward would be to realize that states of slavery were and racisms are current motives to think about the past, but that those who were once slaveholders or benefiters or simple contemporaries of slavery are now the same way as the former slaves citizens of a country, which means: the way we got here has to do with all parts of the population.

The great thing about the USA, from my European perspective, is: The way from 1865 until now has been the achievement of the whole population, not single colours.

Anti-racism is a victory of democracy, and racism not its failure.

This is the American lesson of history.

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I completely agree that blacks were dealt setbacks in society due to years of marginalization (maybe too kind of a word). I hear that idea discussed all the time. We know it is true, but The Great Society was created to help right that wrong. It obviously failed. What I do not understand is that instead of acknowledging its failure, people tend to skip over its existence. There was a significant attempt to right a wrong. Why can people continue to not include it in their discussions? Why can't we review the policies and determine what went wrong with them? Why can't we use our failures to find new approaches?

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I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I also do not feel the policies have been reviewed honestly. From my perspective, the ruling class has decided that the typical reason the policies did not work was because we did not do enough. The assumption seems to be that if we tried a little harder, they would have worked. I would rather argue that the policies did not work because we did not look at the whole person. We only looked at physical needs while ignoring psychological needs.

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