164 Comments

As Michael Ruse said, "...to simplify is to falsify, and yet not to simplify is to remain incoherent..."

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Ethnic demagoguery is what this is! John, you are cited in one of my favorite books “Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study” by Thomas Sowell. It’s all a very human pattern in different multi-ethnic or caste-based societies as they advance!

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If it were very simple, they will filter the arguments or statements of fact through a very complicated analysis; if you play that game you lose.

If it were complex they'd demand you come right out and state it simply; If you play their game you will lose.

If you corner them with facts, they will attack you.

If you attack them and corner them with ad hominem, facts, hypocrisy, contradictions and they sense they are losing the argument they may fall silent. The next day all is memory holed and you may begin again.

What you're actually encountering is double talk which is standard throughout Asia, the Middle East and the Levant. If you point out the double talk they'll fall silent. Then begin again.

There is no talking to these people, the only arguments that work are 'not academic'.

The Elect is simply the religion of Power, it justifies their interests. There will be no O'Brien being honest with Winston and it doesn't matter if they are honest with Winston, he remains a prisoner.

You are not yet a prisoner because they are gathering their strength.

The 'not they' keep talking and not gathering strength and that's their mistake.

As far as agreeing and bowing to Black people of course!

At worst they have to get the checkbook out, or invent some make-work job and the matter is settled. It's not as if they're actually going to listen, and certainly not action whatever the correct, or even contrarian black person says. Sorry, no. They'll smile and agree then go on as before. They're not really worried about losing votes, and not really all that interested in elections anymore. Every election they run will be victorious and you'll probably continue to see the vote margins in the 70~s %.

Look what they do to their own white people, look at what they've got planned and are already openly gloating about. What do you think they'll do to you? Well they're already doing it...meet the Spanish. Who aren't at all shamed at being White Supremacists, indeed far worse.

The good news is they don't yet control anything they don't control, indeed seem to have a terrible Reach::Grasp problem, for now. Nothing will remain beyond their grasp that is talked about or discussed, they only understand fear.

This is nothing new in human history. Just our turn.

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Dear Sir/Mr. McWhorter,

Politics is Power.

Viewed through any other lens distorts indeed conceals the truth: Politics is Power.

In seeking truth academically, you Sir respectfully have missed the main point politically.

Politics is POWER.

In any political dispute, what powers are being contended over?

1] Saying Racist silences debate in Academia, and from Academia most of government, legal, media professions.

2] There are vast fortunes at stake, the middle class livelihood of many middling bureaucrats government, academic and corporate at stake. An honest man such as J/McH might say this is nonsense any 10 year old can see through....well offer the 10 year old the elect's Commissar Powers, income, cars, privileges and you'll see the 10 year old wise up and begin to denounce his or her parents.

3] The agenda of the Elect is the agenda of the Elite: Silence Dissent. Stifle any challenge to power. Disenfranchise voters, and deny them full access to the courts- "you have no standing".

More...hope you don't mind serial points, which are in no way a rebuttal.

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Dr. McWhorter, in another post you sent out today I see this: "THIRD WORLD ANTIRACISM".....IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE "THIRD WAVE ANTIRACISM"?

"But Third World Antiracism also outright harms black people in the name of its guiding impulses. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” for black boys to be overrepresented among those suspended or expelled from schools for violence, which when translated into policy, is documented to have led to violence persisting in the schools and to have lowered students’ grades. Third World Antiracism insists that it is “racist” that black kids are underrepresented in New York City schools requiring high performance on a standardized test for admittance..."

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This is a great observation about reasoning in general. The only way to avoid generalizing about an almost infinitely complex reality is to never note any observations at all. In this sense, all observations are "oversimplified"; the question is not whether one is simplifying, but whether the ways in which one is simplifying--the pattern being drawn out--helps us understand complexity in ways that are helpful.

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Just a small thing - Would you number the emails or something? I get a lot of emails. It’s great btw very thought provoking and challenging. Thank you.

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Thank you, John McWhorter. As many of us know, you write with such great and thought-provoking insights, and such clear, powerful, beautifully onrushing prose. I'm a person of the Left and terribly worried about where some of the Left is going with this. Our largest corporations have subscribed to this new religion, and are masterfully using it as a PR and branding device. We have to be wary of giving so much power over to monied interests that spout nostrums, while they underpay their workers, turn millions of employees into independent contractors in the gig economy (with no benefits or security), and outsource labor to the cheapest developing countries. My work is an an employee-side lawyer, and I'm stunned by the willingness of so many activists to tattle on supposedly errant colleagues for even differences of opinion, and hand them over to management.

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Mr. Hill, I am a simple man who finds lots of big words a tangled mess. It's sort of like the extremely dense vegetation one finds in the Smoky Mountains called Dog Hobble. Bears can get through it, but it sure tangles the hunting dogs. You Bears go ahead and carry on without me. I'll just go sniff something.

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Regarding Mr. McWhorters' detractors, Rule # 1 of White Supremacy (any tyranny will substitute) Always advocate for the bully and make the victim suffer, above all, make the victim hurt. When anyone reacts to a reasoned mind at work and meets the positions set forth with REACTIONS then they refuse to use the good brain given at birth. Instead reaction oriented people use an old, but essential cranial component, not intended for travel in the fast lane today. When confronted with leaping the unfathomable distance from reaction to reason, fear is at work. It's a truly negligible lean within the cranium. Please meet reason with reason. We can recognize reactions as they often pop up today.

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Actually another thing. I'm not actually a CRT advocate. But I am not actually seeing how the two statements below are actually in logical contraduction.

"To ensure a representative number of black students and foster a diversity of views in classrooms, we must adjust what we mean by standards regarding grades and test scores.”

“Assuming a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences is racist, and it’s also racist to expect them to represent the ‘diverse’ perspective (she illustrates this with indignant air quotes) in the classroom.”

If someone can explain it to me then great, but I'm not seeing what requires resolution here.

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I think this article is pretty evasive, but I like it. Do you know why? Because I'm going to have all kinds of fun applying this to IDW-fanboys :-)

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Open letter response to JM

John,

Here in the West I’ve been waiting for a moment to ask you to join us in the struggle...and your timely reframing of secular ideology (CRT) as a form of discourse analogous to traditional Abrahamic religion is welcomed.

Of course, as I’ve pointed out to my colleagues, the problem with CRT (as opposed to those “true” religions) is the lack of honesty about evil. When I pick up the Good Book (either New or Old) I know where I stand. With Luther and Augustine in tow, I am (and you and anyone else including my Woke brothers and sisters!) are under the gaze of concupiscence. We (all humanity) share a common lot and fate. G-d does not check one’s credentials and there is no get out of jail free (race or other) card.

CRT implies Concupiscence in only one direction; it therefore obfuscates its connection to justice. How can there be justice in a world where evil (as for Luther) shit happens?! And when MLK pursued Justice in Faith, did he not humble himself to the possibility that all hands and feet might need washing? King is instructive (and therefore MUST be removed from the Woke pantheon) because his language game demands we see sin for what it is: missing the mark.

At least in the gospels of Christ’s work, redemption is promised!

Here is a 5 questions sincerity test : who/what/where/when/how do advocates of the CRT-SJW alliance propose to redeem us, in the full sense, all of us?

If some, as Calvinist camp of CRT would have it, are predestined to sin (as racists who are spoiled by white privilege), then isn’t the “small degree of freedom” of action/choice we possess merely an illusion?

And if we are eternally damned (radically stained by “historical but lived” privilege) then what shall G-d do with us that these men demand He do?

CRT (which begs and borrows motifs from Exodus) has no foundation or direction: it lacks the basic tenets of any proper Abrahamic gospel.

Ask yourself when these folks speak: who is G-d in this picture? Who is evil? Why are they evil? What is to be done with those who are evil? Is it possible that some (the Esauian elect) among the evil can be reformed while others can not? And last but not least: is the (“white” or any other color coded) Devil likely to subsume his role in the world soon? If so, why? If not, why not?

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re: Jussie Smollett and 800 other real or potential hate hoaxes

(the grievance-industrial-complex)

A catalog/database of false accusations of "racism" would actually be a good project, including for lawyers.*

Dr. Wilfred Reilly wrote a book** on hate crime and race hoaxes that might be a good starting point for those that demand a catalog of examples of PC and SJW narratives run amok.

Dr. Reilly is a lawyer and political science professor at a HBCU. He started with about 800 cases and was able to document over 100 examples of hate crime hoaxes that he thinks can be supported by evidence that would hold up in court.

In other words, over 100 air tight cases that illustrate that race hoaxes are "real", from a legal evidence perspective.

* https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/10/the-totalitarian-impulse-in-the-title-ix-racket/

and:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mark-crispin-miller-sue-for-libel

** https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/wilfred-reilly/hate-crime-hoaxes-why-they-happen/

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Off-topic, but but this is surprising to find in the NY Times: "Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic."

"Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html

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Dear John McWorther!

I come from Austria, a German speaking country and having followed your writings (like "The Language Hoax") and some of your podcast entries on Lexicon Valley, I wanted for a long time ask you something which puzzles me a lot.

As I mention, I am German speaking and listening a lot to English and American voices and what is really disturbing to me how you all in the English speaking world use the word "race".

You may be aware that most common equivalent of "race" in German is the word "Rasse", which was used by the Nazis as a basic category to classify humans (and subhumans), but it is of course much older. Theories about "race" or "Rasse" have been discussed since Gobineau published his book on the issue in 1851 and the term has been used in various languages to create a hierarchy of humans all the way.

It was a topic of discussion in the 80s and 90s how the English term "race" differs from the German word "Rasse", regarding its depth and range of meanings, but listening to the ideological accounts of critical race theory, which I have a lot, gives the disturbing impression that difference between "Rasse" as the Nazis used it and how it is weaponized in the English speaking world to achieve "racial justice" is more or less irrelevant.

Both terms display its target meaning as something that is inherent to the nature of its carrier. While the Nazis understood "Rasse" as the category to describe Aryans, Jews and Slavs as distinct features of group identity, "race" also understands "black" and "white" as ontologically distinct phenomena, which in the case of "whiteness" has the gnostic tone of "oppressor", which cannot be undone by any means, while "black" is the gnostic counterpart.

How do you assess the strange meaning of "race" in this cultural era?

Additionally in the debates around Political Correctness, which happened in the 90s the main strategy of PC was to invert certain power relations. So, the contemporary overemphasis on black identity and black sensitivities seem to be a simple inversion of classical racist stereotypes, which of course are historically totally understandable, but pose a bigger problem.

The objective, in my mind should always be to abandon the systems which create these hierarchical and demeaning attributes, to get rid of racial stereotypes. But the main objective of nowadays anti-racism does not seem to get rid of the system of racial stereotypes, it seems to be a conscious attempt to make the inversion the dominant principle.

Do you think I am getting this completely wrong?

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