Mask-off McWhorter mode enabled. I think the primary reason Kendi can peddle his grift is due to the soft bigotry of low expectations from those around him/society, who is catering to the illiberal Woke. His ideas are unexamined and live in fantastical hypotheticals - they are completely void of substance. Thank you for sharing your insight, it's appreciated!
This is my intuition. All these corporations, but especially white college grads, take up the mantle of this one irrational, anti-humanistic ideology under the guise of ‘ushering in the viewpoint of Black people or marginalized minorities’ and in doing so reveal that their expectations of said people are incredibly low. These are not sophisticated and well-supported (via evidence, or knowledge of human psychology/behavior) ideas and proposals. And I have to believe they are not held by all or most Black Americans. They are the fever dreams of insecure and vengeful individuals, who see a golden opportunity in casting the cutthroat competition of the meritocracy as racial discrimination. Were these ideas not attributed primarily to Black people or those claiming to represent the interest of Black people, I just don’t believe they’d have any traction whatsoever. There are alternatives; MLK’s vision was one the country as a whole seemed to have embraced over 4-5 decades and if my life experience is indicative of anything, real progress was being made. Why now this particularly nasty one? Because as Shelby Steele has said, these white people need to affirm; and affirm you must if you wish to be in the ‘elite.’ Have people really given up on the idea that race relations could be better than perpetually antagonistic?? It’s really disheartening and continues to be difficult for me to believe. I am so thankful to those who carry the banner of reason, common sense, and pride in doing things well in the service of actually noble goals.
After reading his support for a "Department of Anti-Racism", with tenured 'experts' like a Supreme Court, to oversee and vet (and punish) both private and public politics for racism - my only thought is - what's the point Kendi?
His solution is completely incompatible with a liberal, democratic society. It's like secular sharia. And I think for someone to miss at a solution so miserably underlines that they don't really understand the problem either.
Kendi is great - he unambiguously says such horrific and nonsensical things that it’s impossible for any reasonable person to agree with his central points (disparity = racism, capitalism = racism, totalitarian bureau is the solution). I’ve never met anyone who can defend that. As such, he provides irrefutable evidence of how unthinking (or insincere) so many intelligent people have become with regard to a cause done in the name of antiracism. He is so feted and showered with corporate money and mainstream accolades it’s impossible to argue that this insane politics is an irrelevant student sideshow. He is the emperor plainly walking around stark naked for all to see.
Damn, Bob, way to ruin the vibe. That's really depressing, when societal incentives have skewed so far from honesty and reason, and towards rewarding performative virtue and feigned (or trained) "injury".
CRT is explicitly illiberal. Its founders say so. The "Woke" priesthood, though they confuse many people, including many of their own adherents, are interested in "liberal, democratic society" only to the extent it is useful for being transformed into their illiberal vision. It is to be leveraged and destroyed.
It's going to take many courageous folks like yourself to wake this nation up. I for one am very appreciative of your great work and calling out the bullshit. Thank you!!
Not really sure why you are attacking Kendi’s credentials. Putting “professor” in scare quotes is confusing, as he is employed as a professor at Boston University. The questioning of his doctorate is also strange to me, as Kendi does hold a Ph.D. from Temple University. A simple search on Google scholar also retrieves several peer-reviewed articles/chapters Kendi authored or co-authored. Disagree with his ideas and refute his claims about you, fine, that’s your prerogative. But on what basis are you challenging his credentials as a professor, a doctor of philosophy, or a peer-reviewed author? It’s false, petty, sloppy, and frankly beneath the status of your own illustrious credentials to do so.
Maybe he’s attacking his credentials because Kendi uses them to justify his positions. Kendi’s positions are whacked but particularly so coming from a self described scholar.
I agree. I think McWhorter is objecting to Kendi's insistence on arguing from authority and his refusal to engage his critics on a scholarly level. Since he doesn't act like the professional he claims to be, McWhorter is refusing to treat him as one.
Totally agree. Kendi's credentials may be legit, but his refusal to engage appropriately and defend his ideas as an academic of his standing should weakens his arguments and delegitimizes his credentials.
It's a diss, N.A. He's dissing Kendi by calling him "Professor". I think we can infer from the blog post that John is upset with Kendi, because Kendi's said really rude stuff about John in public. John is not disputing the fact that Kendi has a PhD, a job as a professor, and publications. He is saying his work is low-quality. I think you are conflating a rhetorical attack on Kendi's competence with a factual claim about his credentials.
My perception of your tone makes me think you are confused on purpose, but I'm trying not to be judgmental.
Kendi opened himself and his credentials to attack by pointing to them as proof for his positions. His appeal to authority (with himself as that authority) has him self—identifying as an unserious thinker.
You are missing the point. The idea here is that there is a clash between Kendi's external credentials and his actual achievements. In the end, if one wants to convince people, one must make the case and not just wave credentials. Kendi stipulates axioms as if he had received them from god. There is racist and there is anti-racist, but there is no not-racist. He then works out the implications adding unsupported claims all along the way. He's more of a speculative fiction writer than anything else. And his principles and solemn statements often just come out of thin air. I would love to hear him get into a real conversation with Glenn Loury or McWhorter here, or even young Coleman Hughes, who has asked him to come on his podcast. But Hughes is a philosopher. Kendi is not.
But then Kendi has a university perch and ten million dollars of twitter money. He doesn't have to talk with anybody who doesn't agree with him.
There is a whole phony scholarship made up of articles and papers peer-reviewed by like minded "scholars" in the identity politics departments. This is the essence of Kendi's works, and that of everyone else in so-called Critical Studies. The doctorates of people in these fields should be considered in that light. McWhorter is 100% correct in calling Kendi on this.
The point many of us are making is that McWhorter works against his own influence, because he comes across as petty for those who don't know him better or are predisposed to being skeptical towards him. I think it does nothing to help him win influence among those of us who already think favorably towards him and his views. It doesn't matter to the frothing woke mob. It *does* matter to any of us who would like to forward on convincing, thoughtful pieces to those who haven't formed opinions well. I wouldn't want to share it, because I think the "quotations" come off as petty and demeaning regardless of if McWhorter means them to signal his disapproval of Kendi's petty clinging to titles and credentials.
I really don’t feel like he comes across as petty at all. I just discovered the man and I am 100% in agreement with his ideas. He successfully characterized Kendi as the fraud he is.
Welcome. If you like reading McWhorter, consider spending some time reading some of his articles in The Atlantic. His original critique of Kendi's pop anti-racism is certainly worthwhile. You may also be interested in some of his online videos, particularly his back and forths with Glenn Loury at blogginheads.tv as well as some stuff available on youtube. I, too, am late to the game - they've been doing those for a decade!
I call out McWhorter as petty in this instance, because I have high standards and respect for him.
Could it be more of a matter of “you know a tree by its fruit” than any sort of slight to the degree conferring institutions? Kendi may have a PhD but if he doesn’t think, write or speak in a manner typical of a professor thhemwouldnt it be appropriate to put the word professor in quotations? Particularly since McWhorter feels that Kendi behaves more like a zealous priest proselytizing for a new religion, demanding faith rather than thought, it’s reasonable to feel like that behavior undermines the title.
I mean would you still call a catholic priest accused of fiddling children “father”? I wouldn’t. Extreme example, I know, but I think it makes the point
What credentials? PhD in African American Studies is about as rigorous as a PhD in Coloring Inside the Lines! THAT is the point the good Doctor is making. Kendi is undereducated, in over his head and making a fool of himself. There, is that better?.
While I understand McWhorter's claim that Kendi does not argue like someone who has earned a PhD, I also dislike the wording that makes it seem as though Kendi's degree and current position are illegitimate. A persuadable skeptic might reasonably to hesitate to engage with McWhorter's other ideas after seeing things like the scare quotes, because it seems like he is willing to deny empirical facts about Kendi's life to make a point. I would see that as a loss, since I'm generally very persuaded by McWhorter's arguments, I think they are important, and frankly I consider myself to be a big fan of his!
I think Studies refers to interdisciplinary research. For example, Internet Studies has contributions from many disciplines, such as communication, sociology, literary criticism, anthropology.
Perhaps you should write to the chairs of the African American Studies Departments at Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Georgetown, Northwestern, or any number of top universities that grant degrees in the subject. Or even better, the chair of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University where "Professor" John McWhorter himself is employed. I'm sure they can supply a clear answer for you.
“His ideas are couched in simple oppositions mired somewhere between catechism and fable, of a sort alien to what intellectual engagement in the modern world consists of, utterly foreign to exchange among conference academics or even Zooming literati.” Entirely aside from this sentence’s unnecessary prolixity: For the record, neither do “conference academics” nor “Zooming literati” feel it necessary to invalidate their interlocutor’s degrees and credentials before setting forth a refutation. That is not how scholars engage each other in professional settings. Indeed, it is horrifically unprofessional and base. McWhorter, in doing so, insults Boston University, Temple University, and the academic journals and presses which have published Kendi. He implies they do not meet his own personal standards of higher education. Standards, by the way, held by a single individual whose institutional affiliation is with an Ivy League university. It does not take a scholar of linguistics to discern what is being implied by this sort of nose-thumbing at Kendi’s academic training. In a word, John McWhorter is a snob. And if he isn’t, then he’s managed to play one awfully convincingly.
Amen. Exactly. And seriously, the staggering mediocrity of Kendi's work IS an indictment of Boston University and Temple. I honestly wonder if Kendi even KNOWS what a logical fallacy is, much less what a p-value is.
As such, I wonder if these commenters who got their panties in a twist about freakin SCARE quotes held KENDI to account for the slanderous things he said about McWhorter, who does ACTUAL academic research, and whose TWENTY books have actually contributed to the increased awareness of lay people of linguistics. Compare that to Kendi's, which serve as little more than pamphleteering for a cause that fails to inspire based on the merits of his arguments, relies entirely on appeals to emotion and other shibboleths from the grab bag sophistry.
The pearl-clutching from these pseudo-sophisticants is PRECISELY the sort of pretentious pandering about which McWhorter waxes quite eloquent when he talks about the religion of anti-racism.
Boston University is quickly disqualifying itself as an institution of higher learning. FFS, they churned out an economics grad who is more than happy to openly demonstrate her utter ignorance about economics. She currently represents a congressional district in Queens, NY.
Once you figure out what respect tastes like, it tastes better than attention. People like Kendi and AOC only care about the respect of fools and bigots like themselves, and only the attention from everyone else.
🙄 McWhorter not implying anything. He is exposing the irony of an ostensible intellectual with a PhD flaunting his credentials while refusing to defend his arguably shallow work in a scholarly & intellectual manner.
"Unprofessional and base?" A strange argument. "Insults Boston, Temple Unversity?" If so, who cares? who's the snob. They published Kendi. Again, as if that means anything. McWhorter's point is that Kendi's stances and claims are not evidence of his training.
Have Boston University, Temple, and "academic journals and presses" to which you refer, earned permanent shielding from any criticism?? Is the current state of academe such that it is beyond questioning?? Do Kendi's behavior and manner of "discussion" inculcate any confidence in the value of his credentials or the institutions that have granted them to him?
I'd say, forget the argumentum ad vericundiam and entertain some analysis of the contention that Kendi is indeed, a poser, a huckster, a grifter and a bigot. I have never heard him make an actual argument in defense of the crap he has put forth, nor respond (as JMW notes) to any question with anything substantive.
Unless you consider name-calling a fine academic response.
You may not be a "snob", but your abject credentialism isn't very impressive.
N.A., your response to McWhorter's essay is to call him a name ("snob"), to challenge his manners ("unprofessional") and to cast a vague aspersion on his character ("base"). You also make the convoluted argument that challenging the integrity of a PhD's degree and intellectual work indirectly "insults" his alma mater and academic publishers. Evidently you prefer direct insults ("aside from this sentence’s unnecessary prolixity") before setting forth a refutation. To give your umbrage its due, rational people do lower their opinion of a university when it credentials the scholarship of a person who then demonstrates plainly that he is not a scholar. But that problem belongs to the university in question, not people like John McWhorter who are too impolite to call a lie a truth. Ibram Kendi represents himself as a scholar and an intellectual ("@DrIbram") when he is in practice a sermonizing polemicist in over his head, fearful of his critics, and unwilling to defend his ideas in the public sphere. The courage to genuinely engage is what demonstrates to the rest of us that a person is an actual truth seeker rather than merely the facade of one.
Maybe Kendi shouldn't have called McWorther a "white supremacist". I think that would have calmed down the tension and made the tone less hostile. Putting "professor" in scare quotes is all in all very mild, than to call someone else a "white supremacist", who isn't even white.
If you have to force it on others, you probably don’t deserve it. I have a PhD from a top department in a top school. Whorter does too. It’s a tell to include it an online handle.
KAM, really cool about your PhD! It's nice that you are humble enough not to use "Dr. KAM, PhD top dept. top school" as your profile name on this forum. That would really be throwing your degree in our faces, totally déclassé, and a sure sign that you didn't deserve the superlatives. :p
More seriously, I agree with Tom. I'd also add that I don't think there's something inherently wrong with asking people to call you by a particular title or being proud of your educational accomplishments. Deep down, I don't think you do either...
To simplify my comment above, let me use this example. Let's say you have a bonafide Ph.D. Given accepted academic conventions, what do you think you would be signalling to others if you constantly signed your name "Dr. DW, Ph.D." in every missive on social media, and you insisted on your peers and the general public referring to you as "Dr. DW" in every social situation and got irritated or angry if they didn't?
What that signals to non-ideological people is that you're a deeply insecure academic. It says that you're merely trying to score points and create political capital for your side of whatever cargo cult you represent.
Thanks for the simplification, wyclif. I'll try to return the favor. What you are describing is one particular way a person could ask people to call them 'Dr. Whatever'. It sure does sound annoying, I'll grant you that! I don't know anyone that acts that way, but some probably do exist. Now, imagine, if you can, that there are other ways for people to ask someone to use their title. For example, a professor might ask their students to call them 'Dr. This-or-that'. I guess you know quite a bit about accepted academic conventions, so you've probably encountered this. Anyway, it serves to signal a formal relationship between the professor and student, or as a marker of respect, or something like that. Usually, no student refuses to respect the request and the professor doesn't throw a fit if they forget by accident.
So, wyclif, if you're still with me here: it's not always a signal of insecurity to ask someone to use your title. That's because there are lots of different ways to behave and lots of different reasons to do something as generic as asking to be called by a title. The point of my missive (lol) is that you really can't paint with such a broad brush!
Sure, I'd readily grant that it's not in every case a sign of insecurity to use a title in general. I'm only pointing to how some woke academics use title to violate accepted academic convention in the pursuit of political scolding and groupthink conformity.
I think the American convention of profs expecting the use of their title but referring to students by first name is patronizing. Seems to me that it should be Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs/whatever in return, or first names all around.
IF, in response to questioning or disagreement about your pronouncements, you resort to pointing out your credentials...would you consider THAT inappropriate??
It can obnoxious and a sign of insecurity, but that says nothing of the legitimacy of the degree and title itself. McWhorter works against his influence by using quotations.
By "To quote", what do you mean. I think you mean that to quote is to make clear that you are writing something that someone else said or wrote. We enclose words in quotations marks to indicate that someone else said or wrote those words. Is that what you mean by "To quote"?
McWhorter isn't questioning Kendi's credentials, that's the error you're making. He's ridiculing the insecurities of the Comma Ph.D. What is that, one might ask? The Comma Ph.D. is the type of academic who inserts the Ph.D. before every instance of his name, even if their degree is in (LOL) Education. The Comma Ph.D. is jealous of those with real academic accomplishments and prestige, and jealously guards his credential and rights to tag. He takes every opportunity to remind other academics that he is ostensibly a member of the guild, even though they don't respect the shoddy quality of his work and never will. The Comma Ph.D also does not understand statistics and realise that Ph.D.'s are simply not as prized or valued as they were in, say, 1970 (the year the social capital of the Ph.D. probably peaked). News flash: the academic market works on supply and demand. There are so many Ph.D.'s on the market now, the value has dropped dramatically. Sorry not sorry, but simply waving a Ph.D. around and expecting it to impress people without solid argumentation and research isn't going to impress ordinary people anymore, let alone other academics.
It’s actually EdD. (Which Jill Biden holds, and admittedly, it does not contain original, earth shattering research as it is ( should be) required from PhD.
Interesting question and challenge. I can only speak for myself here... in my view some professors publish popular and activist texts that were not peer reviewed or otherwise vetted by scholarly experts, that do not attempt a rigorous adherence to method, and that are otherwise activist, rather than scholarly, in nature. If we are talking about works like that, it's hard to call them works of scholarship.
Your problem is your using google to look up credentials, and peer-reviewed papers. Try 'reading' how he got his credentials, you know the classes he took, and what those classes taught. Furthermore, 'read' his papers. It is utter shite, and brings more racism to the table than stopping it. Kendi is a believer in Farrakhan, one of the most egregious race hustlers of our time. Listen to some of his sermons....they are disgusting. Your struggle is you believe fancy letters before a name means you know all things, and not just believe in theories. Hence critical race 'theory' brought to you my communists from the Frankfurt school in the 1920's whose mission is to use victims to push there agenda. The greater of a 'victim' you are the more moral authority you get. Stop taking the easy way and start doing the hard work.
I distinctly remember my aunt, who was a nurse manager in a hospital and not an academic, making an off hand comment at Christmas dinner about a family friends who was a “Dr.,” but not a real “doctor” as they only had the “Dr.” due to their PhD as opposed to actually being a physician/MD.
Flash forward 20 years and of the cousins attending that Christmas dinner 3 of us are “Dr.”s - both my cousin (ie my aunt’s son) and my brother have their PhDs, but I was the only one to attend medical school. Among select friends and family, in the spirit of sibling rivalry, I often joke about how my brother “only” has his PhD from MIT. . . Why is it we he gets referred to as “Dr.”?
Have either Dr. Kendi or Dr. McWhorter ever intubated a patient? Had to complete an internal medicine rotation? Been on call for general surgery? Delivered a baby? Or even been inside an operating room?
Maybe they both should be using the scare quotes around the use of their title “Dr.” . . . LOL.
(PS before I start a war between myself and every PhD “Dr.” reading this - I mean this entirely in jest. I have huge respect for academic PhD “Dr.”s and have no actual objection to them using the term - if anything, I was taken aback by my aunt’s comment years ago. Just thought this question of scare quotes and the use of titles was amusing based on this anecdote with my aunt.)
I have a relative like that, who always makes fun of me for being a "doctor" ... without being one. I tried to explain that the "doctor" term was first used by PhDs before being co-opted by medical professionals, but it falls on deaf ears. Anyway, I read that "I have no actual objections of them using the term" with a little sting, as, in fact, it should be PhDs who should have no objections to medical pratcitioners using the term. I am not trying to be mean, I understand 100% where you are coming from, and I appreciate you having your brother's back, but just for the sake of the historic truth: "doctor" comes from "doctum", that is a derivative of "docere", Latin verb for "teaching". The first doctors in the very first universities were "teachers of philosophy", hence ... doctors. The medical profession, at that time, was not very well regarded, so they co-opted the title for "prestige" reasons. The PhDs have never been anything but doctors.
That actually reminds me of how in Britain “surgeons” are still “Mr.” I do believe. My understanding is that they enter residency as a “Dr.” and then upon graduating surgical residency they go back to being “Mr.”
In any case I think anyone who has earned a PhD or MD or DDS deserves a measure of respect. As I mentioned, if anything I was taken aback by my aunt’s comment (as it had never occurred to me to not consider someone with a PhD a “Dr”).
To add some levity to this thread I really enjoyed this clip from Mitchell&Webb:
(PS my brother’s PhD from MIT is in aerospace engineering so I guess technically he is a rocket scientist.)
As for McWhorter’s comments here, I interpreted it as him referring to Kendi’s arguments and academic publishing record, and perhaps the use of Dr in his Twitter handle, rather than an actual attack on Dr. Kendi’s credentials.
This is spot on. I love and respect John - that's why I'm here - but the scare quotes gotta go. It scares away would-be conversation. Fence-sitters can't be blamed for seeing the scare quotes and dismissing John. We should invite more and more conversation - not scare it away.
This right here! Finally McWhorter, in full force, stands up to the nonsense and worse, that is the output of Kendi. More, please. These woke monsters won’t be quelled by polite disagreement, the vast majority of well meaning folks will be shifted by reasoned arguments like this, more please!
Indeed. We've tried civil debate, polite disagreement, nuance, etc. with these anti-liberal ideologues for years and they just keep taking advantage of it. The *explicitly* reject those norms. They quite literally believe that if you disagree with them not only your argument but your person must be rejected and crushed. There is a reason McWhorter's characterization of Wokeness as a religion is plausible. Dealing with a Woke is like dealing with a frothing fundamentalist zealot. You are either a True Believer or a heretic in their eyes.
The part missed and that goes a lot with the overall message here is that Kendi is such a lightweight, such a low quality thinker, PRECISELY because he comes from the ethnic studies departments of these Universities. He is, to put it bluntly, the first prominent and most famous academic of this relatively new field in academia. It is a bastion of affirmative action and the most postmodernists, easiest majors to get into and thus, tends to spit out the least qualified graduates. Its proof pudding of what McWhorter is rightfully pointing out and tends to be part and parcel of the graduates in these "studies" fields. I know my share of ethnic studies graduates/professors, and frankly all of em tend to be low quality thinkers. Kendi is now the first one to make a global appearance.
Ouch! The rest of us just THINK it. Haha. It’s probably a result of the democratising effect of an internet that allows ANYONE to convince themselves that they have an intellect - and to allow them to broadcast their half-baked politics. Add to this that many people that go to University and college are barely up to the task, so they drop out of ‘hard’ courses and do ‘studies’ courses. Oops, I think I just wrote that out loud.
"It is of a piece with the fact that his “scholarship” is not based on sustained, original research utilizing close reasoning and being tempered through rigorous evaluation by peers over years’ time." You are asking him to use the scientific method, but we know from "grievance studies" that this method is a toxic tool of western oppression. Using the master's tools to liberate the slaves? I think not!
Ah, and there we start to get at the nub of the gist.
Because the scientific method, despite the efforts of postmodernists and deconstructionists and CRT practitioners to make it so by decree and malice, is not a toxic tool of western oppression. Has it been? Could it be? Sure. Is it, in its nature, solely and by design a "tool of western oppression? No. It is not.
ALSO. Criticism of scientific practice in specific cases does not validate the rejection of empiricism, logic or reason.
So the CRT people are being trained is 'stupid thinking'? Great. The problem is at the root, then, isn't it?
One can't help but note the parallel between this school and those in Germany not so long ago. Here's a description of the country's lead educator and his strikingly similar policies, even down to claims about race-based science.
----
He bluntly informed teachers that their aim was to educate ethnically aware Germans. Rust also believed that non-Aryan science (such as Albert Einstein's "Jewish physics") was flawed, and had what he felt to be a rational explanation for this view. In an address to scientists, he said, "The problems of science do not present themselves in the same way to all men. The Negro or the Jew will view the same world in a different light from the German investigator."
The parallels aren't surprising. If you want to create racial ill-will and supremacist thinking, there's only a limited number of arguments you can make.
I love your work, and this piece is certainly interesting. However, I do wonder why you don't submit a piece of criticism of his scholarship to an academic journal so that he has a greater pressure to respond in kind? It's one thing to criticize someone for their tweets, but I would think that engaging them on the work that provides them their income – for an audience of their professional peers – would be impossible to ignore.
There is no need for the blood-thirst that accompanies going after "the work that provides them their income." I presume Mr. McWhorter is a gentleman to a degree where hitting below that belt is unnecessary. His critical lens is expressed well in this format in my opinion.
I believe you misunderstood my point. It's one thing to criticize Kendi's tweets, it's another to criticize his peer-reviewed work in the same peer-reviewed journals. The goal should be to get Kendi to reply fairly and thoughtfully, and as far as I can tell that is the only way possible. The incentives anywhere else are for mere performance.
Thank you for clarifying Adam. I concur that the primary goal is thoughtful discussion and the performance of grievance can take many forms. Coleman Hughes offered Kendi an open dialogue and thus far there has been no response. https://letter.wiki/conversation/965
Would you say Hughes is more or less performative than McWhorter here?
Kendi tweeted out his criticism. As far as I know, he himself has not written out a longer and more thoughtful piece criticizing McWhorter on another platform. Do you think going from receiving a tweeted performance to publishing criticism in an academic journal is the best use of time? Can peer-reviewed criticism also be a performative (or superfluous) in nature? If so, is there another way to get two people to have a genuine and searching conversation on these topics that the public is privy to?
The goal is obviously to come to a deeper understanding of the divide, and perhaps for both parties to augment their views as a result. Hughes' piece was very good, but being journalistic, there was no incentive for Kendi to care about it. That's a problem. OTOH, peer-review publication is a major source of both Kendi's and McWhorter's professional credentials. It is common for debates within the journals to take place and to result in something very useful. For example, there was a well-known debate between two CRT scholars, Mara Loveman and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva that comes to mind, and I think had a useful result. When writing in a journal, there are incentives to read and respond deeply and generously because that is how one is reviewed and published. There is an incentive to respond to peer-reviewed criticism because a good critique of one's work can overshadow the citations of their own scholarship. Having influence in academia requires receiving numerous positive citations of one's own scholarship. I don't see any way in which McWhorter responding to Kendi's work in an academic journal would not result in a fruitful debate.
I agree those journals can have the benefit of a deeper dialogue. They can also foster intellectual naval gazing to point of inertia.
Since Kendi is capable of making assertions about McWhorter on twitter, rather than in an academic journal, he should be quite capable of responding to criticism on other less formal formats as well. If the singular way of communicating with him is he can say whatever he likes about you on twitter, yet to respond to him, you have to do it through a peer-reviewed journal only, gives a whiff of a type of frailty that won't serve the purpose of meaningful dialogue or fairness.
I appreciate Mr. (*) McWhorter's work, this piece included. However, I would like to see broad claims better supported by the content of the piece itself. Closing with "people... wouldn’t let it pass for a minute if he were white" without recognizing that these same people swallow DiAngelo's (**) proclamations as truth strikes me as odd. No, something deeper - well, shallower really - is at work here. There is indeed a pervasive "fragility", but one of intellect and character, particularly among our "elites". They cave to this claptrap for both selfish and stupid reasons.
* No! Doctor. Indeed Herr Doctor, Yes sir! ;)
** Shall we henceforth refer to her as Tyson-DiAngelo?
There is no washing away. That is the worst part of the "anti-racist" creed:
There is no forgiveness, no path to redemption. You are born with Original Sin and thus require ritual (and forced) cleansing, but no matter what you will never get any cleaner (in fact, it seems the more ritual self-debasement you do, the more you are required to denounce yourself as inferior).
Kendi is such a fraud and charlatan I almost wince that John McWhorter has to rise in defense of himself against such a person. Unfortunately, we live at a time when all standards by which to judge such fakery as Kendi's are themselves under assault. To apply them is to be called a "snob" as I see someone here has done. That's pure diversionary b.s. Standards matter, and you all who think it is wrong to insist on them make yourselves and all of us vulnerable to snake oil in a thousand bottles.
Because she does a great job of making other white people feel guilty about their whiteness. Also, it allows Black people who buy into this foolishness a sense of I told you all White people are racists. All you have to do is challenge it and it falls apart like a wet paper towel.
also, this isn't a black/white thing... it's a Left/right thing. I have yet to learn about a black non-Leftist who supports this nonsense. funny that the solution always amount to "racial equity" whereby everyone lands in the same place. when outcome is guaranteed by the government it is called Communism.
I'd say it is even more of an insecurity-identity thing. Put aside the Trumpists for a moment and consider those who have long identified themselves as "liberal" or "progressive". Many of these people have very shallow roots in any formal tenets or solid frameworks that might underlie those labels. So they are easily moved - they might profess deeply held convictions but they are lightly held. They are often and in many ways insecure and their identification with a label brings them comfort and belonging and functions just as much as a badge of what they are not. So Critical Theory storms onto the scene and they go along with it, sometimes feeling discomfort, but having no real rooting in liberal thought and little backbone to stand up for principles anyway.
Mask-off McWhorter mode enabled. I think the primary reason Kendi can peddle his grift is due to the soft bigotry of low expectations from those around him/society, who is catering to the illiberal Woke. His ideas are unexamined and live in fantastical hypotheticals - they are completely void of substance. Thank you for sharing your insight, it's appreciated!
This is my intuition. All these corporations, but especially white college grads, take up the mantle of this one irrational, anti-humanistic ideology under the guise of ‘ushering in the viewpoint of Black people or marginalized minorities’ and in doing so reveal that their expectations of said people are incredibly low. These are not sophisticated and well-supported (via evidence, or knowledge of human psychology/behavior) ideas and proposals. And I have to believe they are not held by all or most Black Americans. They are the fever dreams of insecure and vengeful individuals, who see a golden opportunity in casting the cutthroat competition of the meritocracy as racial discrimination. Were these ideas not attributed primarily to Black people or those claiming to represent the interest of Black people, I just don’t believe they’d have any traction whatsoever. There are alternatives; MLK’s vision was one the country as a whole seemed to have embraced over 4-5 decades and if my life experience is indicative of anything, real progress was being made. Why now this particularly nasty one? Because as Shelby Steele has said, these white people need to affirm; and affirm you must if you wish to be in the ‘elite.’ Have people really given up on the idea that race relations could be better than perpetually antagonistic?? It’s really disheartening and continues to be difficult for me to believe. I am so thankful to those who carry the banner of reason, common sense, and pride in doing things well in the service of actually noble goals.
Completely agree about this being a way to dodge meritocratic competition that might let the 'wrong kind of people' enjoy the rewards of the system.
Great last sentence:)
After reading his support for a "Department of Anti-Racism", with tenured 'experts' like a Supreme Court, to oversee and vet (and punish) both private and public politics for racism - my only thought is - what's the point Kendi?
His solution is completely incompatible with a liberal, democratic society. It's like secular sharia. And I think for someone to miss at a solution so miserably underlines that they don't really understand the problem either.
Kendi is great - he unambiguously says such horrific and nonsensical things that it’s impossible for any reasonable person to agree with his central points (disparity = racism, capitalism = racism, totalitarian bureau is the solution). I’ve never met anyone who can defend that. As such, he provides irrefutable evidence of how unthinking (or insincere) so many intelligent people have become with regard to a cause done in the name of antiracism. He is so feted and showered with corporate money and mainstream accolades it’s impossible to argue that this insane politics is an irrelevant student sideshow. He is the emperor plainly walking around stark naked for all to see.
Nic, he simultaneously demonstrates the deep moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the coastal elites.
> it’s impossible for any reasonable person to agree with his central points
It's a good thing the world is full of reasonable people, then.
Damn, Bob, way to ruin the vibe. That's really depressing, when societal incentives have skewed so far from honesty and reason, and towards rewarding performative virtue and feigned (or trained) "injury".
Woke's answer to Trump.
CRT is explicitly illiberal. Its founders say so. The "Woke" priesthood, though they confuse many people, including many of their own adherents, are interested in "liberal, democratic society" only to the extent it is useful for being transformed into their illiberal vision. It is to be leveraged and destroyed.
Grateful you are using substack to push back. The rational world needs this.
It's going to take many courageous folks like yourself to wake this nation up. I for one am very appreciative of your great work and calling out the bullshit. Thank you!!
Not really sure why you are attacking Kendi’s credentials. Putting “professor” in scare quotes is confusing, as he is employed as a professor at Boston University. The questioning of his doctorate is also strange to me, as Kendi does hold a Ph.D. from Temple University. A simple search on Google scholar also retrieves several peer-reviewed articles/chapters Kendi authored or co-authored. Disagree with his ideas and refute his claims about you, fine, that’s your prerogative. But on what basis are you challenging his credentials as a professor, a doctor of philosophy, or a peer-reviewed author? It’s false, petty, sloppy, and frankly beneath the status of your own illustrious credentials to do so.
Maybe he’s attacking his credentials because Kendi uses them to justify his positions. Kendi’s positions are whacked but particularly so coming from a self described scholar.
I agree. I think McWhorter is objecting to Kendi's insistence on arguing from authority and his refusal to engage his critics on a scholarly level. Since he doesn't act like the professional he claims to be, McWhorter is refusing to treat him as one.
Totally agree. Kendi's credentials may be legit, but his refusal to engage appropriately and defend his ideas as an academic of his standing should weakens his arguments and delegitimizes his credentials.
It's a diss, N.A. He's dissing Kendi by calling him "Professor". I think we can infer from the blog post that John is upset with Kendi, because Kendi's said really rude stuff about John in public. John is not disputing the fact that Kendi has a PhD, a job as a professor, and publications. He is saying his work is low-quality. I think you are conflating a rhetorical attack on Kendi's competence with a factual claim about his credentials.
My perception of your tone makes me think you are confused on purpose, but I'm trying not to be judgmental.
It clearly is performative confusion.
Kendi opened himself and his credentials to attack by pointing to them as proof for his positions. His appeal to authority (with himself as that authority) has him self—identifying as an unserious thinker.
Well if the Whiteness definitions that were once posted at the Smithsonian are any guide, PhD must be a symbol of total whiteness.
You are missing the point. The idea here is that there is a clash between Kendi's external credentials and his actual achievements. In the end, if one wants to convince people, one must make the case and not just wave credentials. Kendi stipulates axioms as if he had received them from god. There is racist and there is anti-racist, but there is no not-racist. He then works out the implications adding unsupported claims all along the way. He's more of a speculative fiction writer than anything else. And his principles and solemn statements often just come out of thin air. I would love to hear him get into a real conversation with Glenn Loury or McWhorter here, or even young Coleman Hughes, who has asked him to come on his podcast. But Hughes is a philosopher. Kendi is not.
But then Kendi has a university perch and ten million dollars of twitter money. He doesn't have to talk with anybody who doesn't agree with him.
There is a whole phony scholarship made up of articles and papers peer-reviewed by like minded "scholars" in the identity politics departments. This is the essence of Kendi's works, and that of everyone else in so-called Critical Studies. The doctorates of people in these fields should be considered in that light. McWhorter is 100% correct in calling Kendi on this.
I agree. However, the degrees and titles exist. They are observable things. Kendi has a PhD from an accredited institution and holds a professorship.
McWhorter's point was not that Kendi doesn't have an accredited Ph.D., it was a criticism of how Kendi tries and fails to weaponize his credential.
The point many of us are making is that McWhorter works against his own influence, because he comes across as petty for those who don't know him better or are predisposed to being skeptical towards him. I think it does nothing to help him win influence among those of us who already think favorably towards him and his views. It doesn't matter to the frothing woke mob. It *does* matter to any of us who would like to forward on convincing, thoughtful pieces to those who haven't formed opinions well. I wouldn't want to share it, because I think the "quotations" come off as petty and demeaning regardless of if McWhorter means them to signal his disapproval of Kendi's petty clinging to titles and credentials.
I really don’t feel like he comes across as petty at all. I just discovered the man and I am 100% in agreement with his ideas. He successfully characterized Kendi as the fraud he is.
Welcome. If you like reading McWhorter, consider spending some time reading some of his articles in The Atlantic. His original critique of Kendi's pop anti-racism is certainly worthwhile. You may also be interested in some of his online videos, particularly his back and forths with Glenn Loury at blogginheads.tv as well as some stuff available on youtube. I, too, am late to the game - they've been doing those for a decade!
I call out McWhorter as petty in this instance, because I have high standards and respect for him.
Could it be more of a matter of “you know a tree by its fruit” than any sort of slight to the degree conferring institutions? Kendi may have a PhD but if he doesn’t think, write or speak in a manner typical of a professor thhemwouldnt it be appropriate to put the word professor in quotations? Particularly since McWhorter feels that Kendi behaves more like a zealous priest proselytizing for a new religion, demanding faith rather than thought, it’s reasonable to feel like that behavior undermines the title.
I mean would you still call a catholic priest accused of fiddling children “father”? I wouldn’t. Extreme example, I know, but I think it makes the point
I think if McWhorter referred to him as "Rev. Kendi" it would be both more pointed and more appropriate.
Catholic Priest should never be called Father in the first place!
What credentials? PhD in African American Studies is about as rigorous as a PhD in Coloring Inside the Lines! THAT is the point the good Doctor is making. Kendi is undereducated, in over his head and making a fool of himself. There, is that better?.
While I understand McWhorter's claim that Kendi does not argue like someone who has earned a PhD, I also dislike the wording that makes it seem as though Kendi's degree and current position are illegitimate. A persuadable skeptic might reasonably to hesitate to engage with McWhorter's other ideas after seeing things like the scare quotes, because it seems like he is willing to deny empirical facts about Kendi's life to make a point. I would see that as a loss, since I'm generally very persuaded by McWhorter's arguments, I think they are important, and frankly I consider myself to be a big fan of his!
“PhD in African American Studies” What is the nature of “studies” in academia tha differentiates them from standard classification?
I think Studies refers to interdisciplinary research. For example, Internet Studies has contributions from many disciplines, such as communication, sociology, literary criticism, anthropology.
Perhaps you should write to the chairs of the African American Studies Departments at Princeton, Yale, Berkeley, Georgetown, Northwestern, or any number of top universities that grant degrees in the subject. Or even better, the chair of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University where "Professor" John McWhorter himself is employed. I'm sure they can supply a clear answer for you.
What a nonsensical argument.
“His ideas are couched in simple oppositions mired somewhere between catechism and fable, of a sort alien to what intellectual engagement in the modern world consists of, utterly foreign to exchange among conference academics or even Zooming literati.” Entirely aside from this sentence’s unnecessary prolixity: For the record, neither do “conference academics” nor “Zooming literati” feel it necessary to invalidate their interlocutor’s degrees and credentials before setting forth a refutation. That is not how scholars engage each other in professional settings. Indeed, it is horrifically unprofessional and base. McWhorter, in doing so, insults Boston University, Temple University, and the academic journals and presses which have published Kendi. He implies they do not meet his own personal standards of higher education. Standards, by the way, held by a single individual whose institutional affiliation is with an Ivy League university. It does not take a scholar of linguistics to discern what is being implied by this sort of nose-thumbing at Kendi’s academic training. In a word, John McWhorter is a snob. And if he isn’t, then he’s managed to play one awfully convincingly.
It's true that he's not being particularly professional in the ways he addresses Kendi.
It's likely also true that he just doesn't fucking care after being labeled a self-hating bigot by the man.
Amen. Exactly. And seriously, the staggering mediocrity of Kendi's work IS an indictment of Boston University and Temple. I honestly wonder if Kendi even KNOWS what a logical fallacy is, much less what a p-value is.
As such, I wonder if these commenters who got their panties in a twist about freakin SCARE quotes held KENDI to account for the slanderous things he said about McWhorter, who does ACTUAL academic research, and whose TWENTY books have actually contributed to the increased awareness of lay people of linguistics. Compare that to Kendi's, which serve as little more than pamphleteering for a cause that fails to inspire based on the merits of his arguments, relies entirely on appeals to emotion and other shibboleths from the grab bag sophistry.
The pearl-clutching from these pseudo-sophisticants is PRECISELY the sort of pretentious pandering about which McWhorter waxes quite eloquent when he talks about the religion of anti-racism.
The KGB had another term for them: useful idiots
Just so. These comments demand that we take Kendi’s racist pronouncements as serious scholarship.
Temple University, LOL. A joke school if there ever was one. Awash in woke nonsense on stilts.
N.B.: John McWhorter's own mother taught at Temple University, so I don't think ridiculing the institution is a useful tack.
I mind much less if Kendi says things that undermine his arguments because I think it would be a good thing if he failed to persuade people.
Boston University is quickly disqualifying itself as an institution of higher learning. FFS, they churned out an economics grad who is more than happy to openly demonstrate her utter ignorance about economics. She currently represents a congressional district in Queens, NY.
Once you figure out what respect tastes like, it tastes better than attention. People like Kendi and AOC only care about the respect of fools and bigots like themselves, and only the attention from everyone else.
I would think both logical fallacy and p-value are tools of the master.
🙄 McWhorter not implying anything. He is exposing the irony of an ostensible intellectual with a PhD flaunting his credentials while refusing to defend his arguably shallow work in a scholarly & intellectual manner.
His argument does not make him a snob. It simply signals his disdain for the lack of reason Kindi and his racist ilk thrive on.
"Unprofessional and base?" A strange argument. "Insults Boston, Temple Unversity?" If so, who cares? who's the snob. They published Kendi. Again, as if that means anything. McWhorter's point is that Kendi's stances and claims are not evidence of his training.
Perhaps Temple, Boston University and the " academic" journals deserve the insult.
Have Boston University, Temple, and "academic journals and presses" to which you refer, earned permanent shielding from any criticism?? Is the current state of academe such that it is beyond questioning?? Do Kendi's behavior and manner of "discussion" inculcate any confidence in the value of his credentials or the institutions that have granted them to him?
I'd say, forget the argumentum ad vericundiam and entertain some analysis of the contention that Kendi is indeed, a poser, a huckster, a grifter and a bigot. I have never heard him make an actual argument in defense of the crap he has put forth, nor respond (as JMW notes) to any question with anything substantive.
Unless you consider name-calling a fine academic response.
You may not be a "snob", but your abject credentialism isn't very impressive.
N.A., your response to McWhorter's essay is to call him a name ("snob"), to challenge his manners ("unprofessional") and to cast a vague aspersion on his character ("base"). You also make the convoluted argument that challenging the integrity of a PhD's degree and intellectual work indirectly "insults" his alma mater and academic publishers. Evidently you prefer direct insults ("aside from this sentence’s unnecessary prolixity") before setting forth a refutation. To give your umbrage its due, rational people do lower their opinion of a university when it credentials the scholarship of a person who then demonstrates plainly that he is not a scholar. But that problem belongs to the university in question, not people like John McWhorter who are too impolite to call a lie a truth. Ibram Kendi represents himself as a scholar and an intellectual ("@DrIbram") when he is in practice a sermonizing polemicist in over his head, fearful of his critics, and unwilling to defend his ideas in the public sphere. The courage to genuinely engage is what demonstrates to the rest of us that a person is an actual truth seeker rather than merely the facade of one.
Perhaps something's gone off the rails with the academic credentialing system, McWhorter wouldn't be the first to suggest this.
100% the academic credentials system is off the rails. Study critical race theory and be the next big thing on campus. It’s ridiculous.
Maybe Kendi shouldn't have called McWorther a "white supremacist". I think that would have calmed down the tension and made the tone less hostile. Putting "professor" in scare quotes is all in all very mild, than to call someone else a "white supremacist", who isn't even white.
Think: “Dr.” Jill Biden.
If you have to force it on others, you probably don’t deserve it. I have a PhD from a top department in a top school. Whorter does too. It’s a tell to include it an online handle.
KAM, really cool about your PhD! It's nice that you are humble enough not to use "Dr. KAM, PhD top dept. top school" as your profile name on this forum. That would really be throwing your degree in our faces, totally déclassé, and a sure sign that you didn't deserve the superlatives. :p
More seriously, I agree with Tom. I'd also add that I don't think there's something inherently wrong with asking people to call you by a particular title or being proud of your educational accomplishments. Deep down, I don't think you do either...
To simplify my comment above, let me use this example. Let's say you have a bonafide Ph.D. Given accepted academic conventions, what do you think you would be signalling to others if you constantly signed your name "Dr. DW, Ph.D." in every missive on social media, and you insisted on your peers and the general public referring to you as "Dr. DW" in every social situation and got irritated or angry if they didn't?
What that signals to non-ideological people is that you're a deeply insecure academic. It says that you're merely trying to score points and create political capital for your side of whatever cargo cult you represent.
Thanks for the simplification, wyclif. I'll try to return the favor. What you are describing is one particular way a person could ask people to call them 'Dr. Whatever'. It sure does sound annoying, I'll grant you that! I don't know anyone that acts that way, but some probably do exist. Now, imagine, if you can, that there are other ways for people to ask someone to use their title. For example, a professor might ask their students to call them 'Dr. This-or-that'. I guess you know quite a bit about accepted academic conventions, so you've probably encountered this. Anyway, it serves to signal a formal relationship between the professor and student, or as a marker of respect, or something like that. Usually, no student refuses to respect the request and the professor doesn't throw a fit if they forget by accident.
So, wyclif, if you're still with me here: it's not always a signal of insecurity to ask someone to use your title. That's because there are lots of different ways to behave and lots of different reasons to do something as generic as asking to be called by a title. The point of my missive (lol) is that you really can't paint with such a broad brush!
Sure, I'd readily grant that it's not in every case a sign of insecurity to use a title in general. I'm only pointing to how some woke academics use title to violate accepted academic convention in the pursuit of political scolding and groupthink conformity.
I think the American convention of profs expecting the use of their title but referring to students by first name is patronizing. Seems to me that it should be Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs/whatever in return, or first names all around.
Most profs in law school do this. They refer to you as Ms. or mr. (last name). I appreciated it.
IF, in response to questioning or disagreement about your pronouncements, you resort to pointing out your credentials...would you consider THAT inappropriate??
I would. Yes. Because what does it matter? An argument is an argument and academic credentials do not per se make you a smarter or better thinker.
It can obnoxious and a sign of insecurity, but that says nothing of the legitimacy of the degree and title itself. McWhorter works against his influence by using quotations.
You’re overlooking the most common use of quotation marks: To quote. Doesn’t necessarily imply illegitimacy.
By "To quote", what do you mean. I think you mean that to quote is to make clear that you are writing something that someone else said or wrote. We enclose words in quotations marks to indicate that someone else said or wrote those words. Is that what you mean by "To quote"?
McWhorter isn't questioning Kendi's credentials, that's the error you're making. He's ridiculing the insecurities of the Comma Ph.D. What is that, one might ask? The Comma Ph.D. is the type of academic who inserts the Ph.D. before every instance of his name, even if their degree is in (LOL) Education. The Comma Ph.D. is jealous of those with real academic accomplishments and prestige, and jealously guards his credential and rights to tag. He takes every opportunity to remind other academics that he is ostensibly a member of the guild, even though they don't respect the shoddy quality of his work and never will. The Comma Ph.D also does not understand statistics and realise that Ph.D.'s are simply not as prized or valued as they were in, say, 1970 (the year the social capital of the Ph.D. probably peaked). News flash: the academic market works on supply and demand. There are so many Ph.D.'s on the market now, the value has dropped dramatically. Sorry not sorry, but simply waving a Ph.D. around and expecting it to impress people without solid argumentation and research isn't going to impress ordinary people anymore, let alone other academics.
It’s actually EdD. (Which Jill Biden holds, and admittedly, it does not contain original, earth shattering research as it is ( should be) required from PhD.
Interesting question and challenge. I can only speak for myself here... in my view some professors publish popular and activist texts that were not peer reviewed or otherwise vetted by scholarly experts, that do not attempt a rigorous adherence to method, and that are otherwise activist, rather than scholarly, in nature. If we are talking about works like that, it's hard to call them works of scholarship.
I agree 100%
Your problem is your using google to look up credentials, and peer-reviewed papers. Try 'reading' how he got his credentials, you know the classes he took, and what those classes taught. Furthermore, 'read' his papers. It is utter shite, and brings more racism to the table than stopping it. Kendi is a believer in Farrakhan, one of the most egregious race hustlers of our time. Listen to some of his sermons....they are disgusting. Your struggle is you believe fancy letters before a name means you know all things, and not just believe in theories. Hence critical race 'theory' brought to you my communists from the Frankfurt school in the 1920's whose mission is to use victims to push there agenda. The greater of a 'victim' you are the more moral authority you get. Stop taking the easy way and start doing the hard work.
I read this debate with amusement.
Why?
I distinctly remember my aunt, who was a nurse manager in a hospital and not an academic, making an off hand comment at Christmas dinner about a family friends who was a “Dr.,” but not a real “doctor” as they only had the “Dr.” due to their PhD as opposed to actually being a physician/MD.
Flash forward 20 years and of the cousins attending that Christmas dinner 3 of us are “Dr.”s - both my cousin (ie my aunt’s son) and my brother have their PhDs, but I was the only one to attend medical school. Among select friends and family, in the spirit of sibling rivalry, I often joke about how my brother “only” has his PhD from MIT. . . Why is it we he gets referred to as “Dr.”?
Have either Dr. Kendi or Dr. McWhorter ever intubated a patient? Had to complete an internal medicine rotation? Been on call for general surgery? Delivered a baby? Or even been inside an operating room?
Maybe they both should be using the scare quotes around the use of their title “Dr.” . . . LOL.
(PS before I start a war between myself and every PhD “Dr.” reading this - I mean this entirely in jest. I have huge respect for academic PhD “Dr.”s and have no actual objection to them using the term - if anything, I was taken aback by my aunt’s comment years ago. Just thought this question of scare quotes and the use of titles was amusing based on this anecdote with my aunt.)
I have a relative like that, who always makes fun of me for being a "doctor" ... without being one. I tried to explain that the "doctor" term was first used by PhDs before being co-opted by medical professionals, but it falls on deaf ears. Anyway, I read that "I have no actual objections of them using the term" with a little sting, as, in fact, it should be PhDs who should have no objections to medical pratcitioners using the term. I am not trying to be mean, I understand 100% where you are coming from, and I appreciate you having your brother's back, but just for the sake of the historic truth: "doctor" comes from "doctum", that is a derivative of "docere", Latin verb for "teaching". The first doctors in the very first universities were "teachers of philosophy", hence ... doctors. The medical profession, at that time, was not very well regarded, so they co-opted the title for "prestige" reasons. The PhDs have never been anything but doctors.
That actually reminds me of how in Britain “surgeons” are still “Mr.” I do believe. My understanding is that they enter residency as a “Dr.” and then upon graduating surgical residency they go back to being “Mr.”
In any case I think anyone who has earned a PhD or MD or DDS deserves a measure of respect. As I mentioned, if anything I was taken aback by my aunt’s comment (as it had never occurred to me to not consider someone with a PhD a “Dr”).
To add some levity to this thread I really enjoyed this clip from Mitchell&Webb:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
(PS my brother’s PhD from MIT is in aerospace engineering so I guess technically he is a rocket scientist.)
As for McWhorter’s comments here, I interpreted it as him referring to Kendi’s arguments and academic publishing record, and perhaps the use of Dr in his Twitter handle, rather than an actual attack on Dr. Kendi’s credentials.
Great sketch. Webb is SO f'ing smarmy! Very good at it.
I hold one of those degrees, but have never heard the description of its origin. Thank you.
Btw - I wasn’t aware of that history, it am far from surprised!
This is spot on. I love and respect John - that's why I'm here - but the scare quotes gotta go. It scares away would-be conversation. Fence-sitters can't be blamed for seeing the scare quotes and dismissing John. We should invite more and more conversation - not scare it away.
LOVE THIS. Keep exposing this fraud.
This right here! Finally McWhorter, in full force, stands up to the nonsense and worse, that is the output of Kendi. More, please. These woke monsters won’t be quelled by polite disagreement, the vast majority of well meaning folks will be shifted by reasoned arguments like this, more please!
Indeed. We've tried civil debate, polite disagreement, nuance, etc. with these anti-liberal ideologues for years and they just keep taking advantage of it. The *explicitly* reject those norms. They quite literally believe that if you disagree with them not only your argument but your person must be rejected and crushed. There is a reason McWhorter's characterization of Wokeness as a religion is plausible. Dealing with a Woke is like dealing with a frothing fundamentalist zealot. You are either a True Believer or a heretic in their eyes.
Thanks, John, for consistently standing up and calling out the bullshit. Marvelous work
The part missed and that goes a lot with the overall message here is that Kendi is such a lightweight, such a low quality thinker, PRECISELY because he comes from the ethnic studies departments of these Universities. He is, to put it bluntly, the first prominent and most famous academic of this relatively new field in academia. It is a bastion of affirmative action and the most postmodernists, easiest majors to get into and thus, tends to spit out the least qualified graduates. Its proof pudding of what McWhorter is rightfully pointing out and tends to be part and parcel of the graduates in these "studies" fields. I know my share of ethnic studies graduates/professors, and frankly all of em tend to be low quality thinkers. Kendi is now the first one to make a global appearance.
Ouch! The rest of us just THINK it. Haha. It’s probably a result of the democratising effect of an internet that allows ANYONE to convince themselves that they have an intellect - and to allow them to broadcast their half-baked politics. Add to this that many people that go to University and college are barely up to the task, so they drop out of ‘hard’ courses and do ‘studies’ courses. Oops, I think I just wrote that out loud.
"It is of a piece with the fact that his “scholarship” is not based on sustained, original research utilizing close reasoning and being tempered through rigorous evaluation by peers over years’ time." You are asking him to use the scientific method, but we know from "grievance studies" that this method is a toxic tool of western oppression. Using the master's tools to liberate the slaves? I think not!
Ah, and there we start to get at the nub of the gist.
Because the scientific method, despite the efforts of postmodernists and deconstructionists and CRT practitioners to make it so by decree and malice, is not a toxic tool of western oppression. Has it been? Could it be? Sure. Is it, in its nature, solely and by design a "tool of western oppression? No. It is not.
ALSO. Criticism of scientific practice in specific cases does not validate the rejection of empiricism, logic or reason.
So the CRT people are being trained is 'stupid thinking'? Great. The problem is at the root, then, isn't it?
One can't help but note the parallel between this school and those in Germany not so long ago. Here's a description of the country's lead educator and his strikingly similar policies, even down to claims about race-based science.
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He bluntly informed teachers that their aim was to educate ethnically aware Germans. Rust also believed that non-Aryan science (such as Albert Einstein's "Jewish physics") was flawed, and had what he felt to be a rational explanation for this view. In an address to scientists, he said, "The problems of science do not present themselves in the same way to all men. The Negro or the Jew will view the same world in a different light from the German investigator."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Rust
----
The parallels aren't surprising. If you want to create racial ill-will and supremacist thinking, there's only a limited number of arguments you can make.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Dachau Liberated
That’s interesting. Do you think that grievance politics and racial supremacy are intertwined?
I love your work, and this piece is certainly interesting. However, I do wonder why you don't submit a piece of criticism of his scholarship to an academic journal so that he has a greater pressure to respond in kind? It's one thing to criticize someone for their tweets, but I would think that engaging them on the work that provides them their income – for an audience of their professional peers – would be impossible to ignore.
There is a long tradition of call out writing. This includes among black writers. A good example is Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B Du Bois. https://www.biography.com/news/web-dubois-vs-booker-t-washington
There is no need for the blood-thirst that accompanies going after "the work that provides them their income." I presume Mr. McWhorter is a gentleman to a degree where hitting below that belt is unnecessary. His critical lens is expressed well in this format in my opinion.
I believe you misunderstood my point. It's one thing to criticize Kendi's tweets, it's another to criticize his peer-reviewed work in the same peer-reviewed journals. The goal should be to get Kendi to reply fairly and thoughtfully, and as far as I can tell that is the only way possible. The incentives anywhere else are for mere performance.
Thank you for clarifying Adam. I concur that the primary goal is thoughtful discussion and the performance of grievance can take many forms. Coleman Hughes offered Kendi an open dialogue and thus far there has been no response. https://letter.wiki/conversation/965
Would you say Hughes is more or less performative than McWhorter here?
Kendi tweeted out his criticism. As far as I know, he himself has not written out a longer and more thoughtful piece criticizing McWhorter on another platform. Do you think going from receiving a tweeted performance to publishing criticism in an academic journal is the best use of time? Can peer-reviewed criticism also be a performative (or superfluous) in nature? If so, is there another way to get two people to have a genuine and searching conversation on these topics that the public is privy to?
The goal is obviously to come to a deeper understanding of the divide, and perhaps for both parties to augment their views as a result. Hughes' piece was very good, but being journalistic, there was no incentive for Kendi to care about it. That's a problem. OTOH, peer-review publication is a major source of both Kendi's and McWhorter's professional credentials. It is common for debates within the journals to take place and to result in something very useful. For example, there was a well-known debate between two CRT scholars, Mara Loveman and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva that comes to mind, and I think had a useful result. When writing in a journal, there are incentives to read and respond deeply and generously because that is how one is reviewed and published. There is an incentive to respond to peer-reviewed criticism because a good critique of one's work can overshadow the citations of their own scholarship. Having influence in academia requires receiving numerous positive citations of one's own scholarship. I don't see any way in which McWhorter responding to Kendi's work in an academic journal would not result in a fruitful debate.
I agree those journals can have the benefit of a deeper dialogue. They can also foster intellectual naval gazing to point of inertia.
Since Kendi is capable of making assertions about McWhorter on twitter, rather than in an academic journal, he should be quite capable of responding to criticism on other less formal formats as well. If the singular way of communicating with him is he can say whatever he likes about you on twitter, yet to respond to him, you have to do it through a peer-reviewed journal only, gives a whiff of a type of frailty that won't serve the purpose of meaningful dialogue or fairness.
Something about heat and kitchens come to mind.
I appreciate Mr. (*) McWhorter's work, this piece included. However, I would like to see broad claims better supported by the content of the piece itself. Closing with "people... wouldn’t let it pass for a minute if he were white" without recognizing that these same people swallow DiAngelo's (**) proclamations as truth strikes me as odd. No, something deeper - well, shallower really - is at work here. There is indeed a pervasive "fragility", but one of intellect and character, particularly among our "elites". They cave to this claptrap for both selfish and stupid reasons.
* No! Doctor. Indeed Herr Doctor, Yes sir! ;)
** Shall we henceforth refer to her as Tyson-DiAngelo?
...But am I racist for agreeing with what you are writing?
You were born racist. Ritual cleansing is necessary for you to wash away the infinite layers like Sisyphus, a task never achieved but vital.
There is no washing away. That is the worst part of the "anti-racist" creed:
There is no forgiveness, no path to redemption. You are born with Original Sin and thus require ritual (and forced) cleansing, but no matter what you will never get any cleaner (in fact, it seems the more ritual self-debasement you do, the more you are required to denounce yourself as inferior).
So well put Tom.
Kendi is such a fraud and charlatan I almost wince that John McWhorter has to rise in defense of himself against such a person. Unfortunately, we live at a time when all standards by which to judge such fakery as Kendi's are themselves under assault. To apply them is to be called a "snob" as I see someone here has done. That's pure diversionary b.s. Standards matter, and you all who think it is wrong to insist on them make yourselves and all of us vulnerable to snake oil in a thousand bottles.
"Here’s the rub: The people who sit drinking all of this in and calling it deep wouldn’t let it pass for a minute if he were white."
Then how does this explain the success of Robin DiAngelo, who is if anything an even bigger fraud and poseur than Kendi and who is....white?
Because she does a great job of making other white people feel guilty about their whiteness. Also, it allows Black people who buy into this foolishness a sense of I told you all White people are racists. All you have to do is challenge it and it falls apart like a wet paper towel.
also, this isn't a black/white thing... it's a Left/right thing. I have yet to learn about a black non-Leftist who supports this nonsense. funny that the solution always amount to "racial equity" whereby everyone lands in the same place. when outcome is guaranteed by the government it is called Communism.
I'd say it is even more of an insecurity-identity thing. Put aside the Trumpists for a moment and consider those who have long identified themselves as "liberal" or "progressive". Many of these people have very shallow roots in any formal tenets or solid frameworks that might underlie those labels. So they are easily moved - they might profess deeply held convictions but they are lightly held. They are often and in many ways insecure and their identification with a label brings them comfort and belonging and functions just as much as a badge of what they are not. So Critical Theory storms onto the scene and they go along with it, sometimes feeling discomfort, but having no real rooting in liberal thought and little backbone to stand up for principles anyway.
Michele whines about using Nazi comparisons while making stupid analogies to Communism...
"I have yet to learn about a black non-Leftist " - since you don't know any