Serial excerpt No. 5: Why it won't do to admit this is a religion and "own" it - The Elect harbor a religion that harms black people in countless ways.
Given the litany of enslavement, Jim Crow, exclusion from good jobs and neighborhoods and prosperity that followed, a core black population doesnt like anything "white." One can hardly blame them, even as they cut off their own chances. At the same time, a subculture perpetuates certain behaviors. Thirdly, some have internalized the blanket response that nothing is their fault. The resultant cocktail is toxic.
"Those are the facts" regarding black boys being more violent than other students in school. But if we accept this as fact, it does not mean we should not be asking the all important question of "why black boys are more violent in school?" Could that have something to do with structural racism? I think so, but I am open to other view points.
Because I don't think black boys are genetically predisposed to be more violent than other boys. As McWhorter alludes to later in the article, this may be a legacy of racism rather than a current symptom. And it may have to do with the home and neighborhood environments these boys live in. And those environments may also be affected by the legacy of racism. Note that I said "something to do with it" and not "caused in their entirety by" structural racism.
So it's genetic predisposition or racism? The possibilities end there? Then how does one explain the fact that the vast majority of kids in inner city communities are good kids who manage to stay out of trouble? I grew up the inner-city in Brooklyn NY in the 60's when yoke of racism pressed much harder on the backs of black people. Trouble was color-blind and took down both white kids and black kids with impunity. I moved to a Jewish and Italian neighborhood when I was 16. My Jewish classmantes got better grades than the Italian kids. They got disciplined in school less than the Italian kids. A few of the Italian kids wound up in the Mob and did time. None of the Jewish kids. How does one explain such differences?
This of course does not mean that blacks have not suffered from racism. It doesn't mean that the effects of past discrimination no longer impact some. But it does point to the fact that reducing everything to race is simplistic and counter-productive. The issue is driven by poverty, culture, the obliteration of the family, the loss of spiritual ties within communities, the moral decline of the times and yes....race.
If you read my reply carefully, you will see that I am not reducing everything to race and mentioned other possibilities, such as home and neighborhood environments, which seems to agree with your point about Jewish and Italian kids.
You are correct. I just think its become a near reflex action today to ascribe race as the primary or sole cause of all that ails black people. I think that's a self-defeating way of looking at things. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we ignore the reality of racism. Just don't make it more of a monstrosity than it actually is. You can use fire to warm your house or burn it down.
"The nut of the issue has always been that if we don't trace the problems to racism, then the only other possibility must be that black people are inherently deficient somehow." What are "the problems" though? For example, the NBA is 74% black and 17% white, The NFL is 69% black and 29% white. Presumably that inequality is NOT a result of discrimination. If we can live with the seeming fact that black people are better at basketball and football (on average) why is it such a huge deal if white people are better at math?
"only ticket to lifetime success". In the words of the Frinkazoid, that depends on how you define success. Do you have to be in the top quintile to be a success? Above the median income? Mathematically about 80% of the population will fail in the first metric and 50% will fail by the second.
My question would be what about the failures? Why can't they also have a good life? We can't all work high status, high paying jobs, and as more and more people get college degrees, that will be true of more college graduates too. It is not "career success" or jail any more than it is Yale or jail. There is, however, a lack of a safety net, but also a worry that too much of a safety net will become a hammock for many.
So much of what is preached by the Elect completely ignores American history in the context of contemporary world history. Everytime I'm accused of bearing responsibility for what ocurred in 1619 and beyond I am left to wonder exactly what my "ancestors" in Sicily were doing at that point in time. There's a good chance that we were being brutalized and subjegated by invaders and barbaric rulers. I'm also left wondering what life was like in other places in the world at that time. What common customs prevailed that one today might consider barbaric (child sacrifice, genital mutilation, etc.) ? What sort of economic and political systems ruled the day? What was daily life like for the surf, slave, woman, child , etc. outside of what is now America? I'd love to see someone....John perhaps...do a short encapsulation of world history from 1619 to the present day. It think it would paint a picture of common human suffering that is hidden by Elect ideology and highlight the enormous contributions made by Western Civilization to the betterment of the world. It's a perspective that needs to be understood.
One thing happening in 1619 was the Thirty Years War. It was just getting started. As I learned it, the result was about 10,000,000 dead Germans "Population losses for the whole of Germany are estimated at 1/3 of the city population and 2/5 of the rural population. It should be added that further losses were suffered in the devastation of the wars of Louis XIV and of the Nordic War." (from Hajo Holborn)
It's a religion, all right. Notes from last week's faculty meeting: The population of our university preparation program is mostly Chinese nationals. So the concern was how to make them feel "safe" given all of this Anti-Asian Hate. This on the tail end of emails that denounced the shooting in Atlanta (which ought to go without saying) along with testimony to how the US has been anti-Asian for centuries, listing various crimes and laws against Asians dating back over a hundred years. How this could seem "welcoming" and "safe" is beyond me. One Asian faculty member claimed that she is afraid to leave her apartment because of all the "hate" out there. Even though our program is advertised as preparing students for art and design fields, we were asked how we teach anti-racism in our classes. One faculty member said she has them read a story about being discriminated against, as she had been when she first came to the US because she is 'brown,' which was hilarious to me because I have been working with her for over fifteen years and never noticed that she is "brown." Her writing assignment -- for young Chinese nationals -- requires them to provide a personal narrative on their experience with racism in the United States (this is NYC), which for all intents and purposes forces them to find it in order to get points for doing their homework. But the real kicker came when someone posited that our students need to "see themselves" in the materials we assign. One woman "realized" that she was assigning too many white men, so she replaced an essay on the same subject but written by a black man, and this was "better." I am still scratching my chin trying to figure out how a room full of wealthy 18-year-old Chinese women would "see themselves" in an essay written by a black man, but not in an essay written by a white man. This was followed by several testimonies to "realizing the harms their whiteness had caused." I could see my tortured expression in my zoom box. How to respond to that -- I wanted to say -- You go on ahead and suck up that narcissistic abuse. But I had already risked my position by insisting that we not impose ideological perspectives on students -- it's one thing to introduce them to the ideas, quite another to say: I think it is very important for them to understand that there is systemic racism.
I feel like the central problem revealed by this unfortunate story you tell is that all the actors are reading mindlessly from a mediocre script. I've experienced similar meetings, though thankfully, not quite as over the top as what you describe. I always feel in such a context that people are giving up their humanity- their beautiful, weird, complicated, humanity- in favor of being on the "right" side of history, or something.
I'm trying to resist the urge to deny those reading mindlessly from the script their humanity- even though they're kind of asking for it! Maybe they're seeing something I'm missing. Maybe not. Hey, we're all just flawed humans walking the earth trying to figure it out. I don't want to just read from my own skeptical script. I want to listen, learn, and engage. I've done that a little.
I'm curious how you do navigate these kinds of meetings and what the response is.
You raise a good point -- one doesn't want to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. On the other hand, there is a complete lack of logic to this script that evokes just about every dystopian situation I can think of. Just as we shouldn't obligate anyone else to apologize for their -- Chinese-ness, or their Blackness, nor should whites apologize for their 'Whiteness.' This smacks of pre-genocide. There was a strident insistence that the moral perspective on the Atlanta shootings was racism -- someone even argued that the primary source could be lying about it -- as if he hadn't done enough damage already? (And why is it "worse" to attack someone of another race, when attacking someone regardless of race is just plain wrong?) I go into these meetings telling myself to just listen, but it gets so ridiculously self-serving and black and white that I can't sit idly by -- it's like allowing a child to run out in front of a car. It's also, dare I say, triggering. Years ago, a black student threatened me with a knifing over a grade, and the administration treated the situation as -- well she's white and he's black so she must be a racist -- even though other students complained. But those students were not Black. It wasn't until Black students complained that the administration would take seriously a student who not only threatened me, but other professors in the department. Imagine telling a female instructor that "he has a right to an education" after he told you he would give you "a buck fifty" and was threatening other students with this as well. That's where this seems to be going. Impunity for one race, no due process for the other. And we have plenty of fodder from history to tell us that this is not where we want to go, and yet we are speeding towards it.
First, the assertion that prior to 1863 black people were slaves is not exactly true. While most black people in the South were slaves, and continued to be until 1865, not all were and blacks in the North most definitely were not. Furthermore, thousands of blacks owned slaves. Second, I have my doubts about the claims that white teachers in the 60s and 70s were "racist." No doubt some were but remember that the civil rights movement was a product of the 50s, not the 70s. As for "Jim Crow," segregation - which primarily consisted of segregated schools - existed only in the South and Midwest. The facts are that whites and blacks have coexisted and worked together all along, even during slavery although slaves were owned and provided food and shelter while poor whites worked for it. I suspect "the Elites" are more a product of politics than anything else.
"But in reality, cultural traits often persist beyond their original stimulus, having become subconsciously transmitted habit."
I often think -- but would never say out loud -- that the legacy of slavery has badly damaged black people in the US, but not in ways that would get me feted as the Wokest White Lady At The Charity Mixer.
Think about it. When you are working as a slave for someone else's enrichment and not your own, isn't refusal to work as hard as you can a form of rebellion? To slack off, to get away with shoddy work, is a form of self-esteem or righteous rebellion against injustice. To a slave, slacking off is a noble act, a small blow against injustice since your hard work would only put money in the pocket of your oppressor. That's the true poison of slavery: deeply engrained learned helplessness that persists long past when it was relevant.
The thing is, the rules have changed now. Most of us do work to put money in the pockets of others (Jeff Bezos has just WAY THE F*CK TOO MUCH MONEY, seriously -- no one needs that much money, people do not grasp how much 100 billion of anything is), but we also can work to better ourselves. We get paychecks, and we can earn more through learning and working well, even if we can't get to Zuckerf*cker status purely through virtuous hard work.
But that attitude that slacking off is a blow against the oppressor remains in the minds of those who have a legacy of slavery in their culture. I think that's that's the most destructive thing about the legacy of slavery: now that we can actually benefit from our own hard work (and we can, no matter what the brocialists would have us think), some of us are still living in a culture that thinks that shooting themselves in the foot by slacking off is an blow against injustice.
But I dare not say that out loud. No one dares to say it out loud, that the most destructive legacy of slavery is to have programmed a whole group of Americans that they can never, ever get ahead by dint of their own hard work in the 21st century because their hard work and ambition benefitted only their oppressors in the 19th century.
But how have we arrived at the point where saying out loud the precise way that the legacy of slavery has crippled Black Americans would get my dark white ass cancelled? How the hell can we solve this problem that continues to dog Black Americans if we can't even describe it out loud?!
I also felt I should address what you said about disadvantaged students who can't take in ideas quickly. I don't think that's the problem, the inability to think or learn quickly. In my experience as a disadvantaged kid who was also a math prodigy, the biggest problems I had were caused by the absence of cultural capital, little things that had nothing to do with how fast I could think. I ran rings around pretty much everyone else, including a lot of rich kids who were freaked out by it. But what I lacked was:
1. Parents who knew professors who could get me jobs in their labs over the summer,
2. People who could tell me that while "Who's Who In American High School Students" was a book-seller scam, Phi Beta Kappa was something I should have put on my resume,
3. People who could tell me that the opportunity grants I got were not the same as the Teas Scholar status I won by my utterly insane grades,
4. People who could tell me not to listen to the high school counselor who had no damned clue what to do with someone like me and could fob me off on someone who could give better advice,
5. People who could tell me proper lab etiquette, and the difference between a counselor and a mentor ...
and on and on the list goes. This is what I was missing, and there is no easy way to address these problems. The only way they can be addressed is for parents to get better educated themselves before they have kids. If your parents have a college education, you already have a huge leg up. Mine didn't and could hence give me zero help at all when I moved into a world they couldn't prepare me for. The single biggest thing you could do for your kids is to have ambition and a g/d college education yourself.
I suggest a book "Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro slavery" by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. It might surprise you to learn that slaves were frequently rewarded for hard work with money, a plot of land to grow their own crops (often for sale), better housing, being taught technical skills such as carpentry and smithing (from which they could earn money), and being made supervisors. Many plantation overseers and most work gang supervisors were black slaves. It's only since the welfare system in the 1960s that black Americans have been taught not to work, as John points out.
It is my understanding that blacks coming out of slavery did not display the form of rebellion you describe. In fact, if folks like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are to be believed, they came out of slavery a liberated people eager to make their way in the world through the sweat of their brow. It is also my understanding from the above noted folks that during the 1930's and 40's, the black unemployment rate was as low as the white unemployment rate and that the black family, while continuing to suffer from the scourge of racism, remained strong and intact. If you have not already done so read Shelby Steele's The Content of their Character which, in my opinion, does a better job of explaining black and white dynamics in America than any book ever written.
It's actually a pearl that runs through all of human history...the triumph over oppression, poverty, etc. While we should be mindful of the black experience in America, we should not pretend that theirs is the only history filled with tragedy and oppression. A woe is me outlook on life guarantees that you'll continue to suffer and struggle. This is as true for groups of people as it is for individuals.
I think you are on to something in terms of the learned helplessness.
Also, I had a similar experience of not having useful guidance from the adults around me - much of it due to parochial thinking and slightly limp educations.
What sort of evidence do you want to see? If you mean am I a 30-year veteran social psychologist, then the answer is no. I suspect you aren't, either. But "learned helplessness" is not a new concept, and it's been well-researched.
I'd be interested in knowing exactly where that sense of helplessness comes from. Is it soley derived from the cumulitive affects of slavery and racism or are other factors involved, factors that are completely under the control of black people.
Why does the idea that learned helplessness is part of the legacy of slavery offend you so much? You may be trying to hide it and acting "academic" about it, but it's not working. Slavery is destructive and damaging in many ways, and it's a perfect breeding ground for the spiritual poison of learned helplessness.
I can't believe that I'm actually having to explain to anyone in this day and age that slavery leaves a destructive legacy. Do you think it's a-okay to own people like furniture, and that it does no damage to those who endured it? That they can simply shake it off? That anyone who has endured abuse can instantly act like it never happened? That intergenerational trauma is a myth?
Slavery is evil for actual reasons, among them being individual and group psychological and cultural destruction.
I'm not offended by your idea. I'm asking if you have any evidence to support it, or if it's just an incubating notion you have. It doesn't need to be academic evidence. I'd actually love to read anything you have! Maybe you'll convince me (and others) that you're onto something.
Also, I am not disputing that slavery has left a destructive legacy, generally speaking, or in any number of specific ways. Rather, I am asking you to develop and support the very particular hypothesis that you put forward- namely that learned helplessness is super prevalent amongst American decedents of enslaved people because their ancestors slacked off or did shoddy work in order to raise a middle finger at the slave master. You seem to be saying that a cultural trait that was adaptive then, is now maladaptive. What you haven't done though, is demonstrate that this cultural trait existed during slavery, or that it exists now, or that to the extent it exists now, it is because of this legacy of slavery.
I have read a few slave narratives and don't recall anything like this picture you paint. My recollection is that the punishment for any insubordinate behavior, or any perceived insubordination, was so brutal and public- as to highly discourage such behavior.
(1) This is the best chapter yet. (2) Seeing the word "ideas" in quotation marks in reference to Kendi's "ideas" made me laugh both times I saw it.
The idea that post-slavery black Americans were hugely in favor of school is no surprise. That black kids (who had bad experiences being bussed into white schools) decided that school is "white" is no surprise, I guess? However, I didn't encounter that, exactly, from my black friends in the majority-black school I attended in the late '70s -- and bussing was around then, still, but not at my school (and I don't remember the details?) but perhaps the kids at my school didn't have that association with school being "white" because their school was majority black?
Well...trying to think back... at that particular school at least, the black students weren't singled out to be treated as hopeless cases destined to failure by a few hostile mostly-white teachers in a mostly-white context, right? So the kids didn't seem to associate school with "white"? At least at _that_ school at _that_ time?
BUT... what was it like? Well, my memory is that we were _all_ treated like hopeless cases, en masse. Children of the working poor and poor, with no expectations for success or an interesting future, with the result that the feeling in my school wasn't "doing well in school is a white thing" but rather, "Poor people are dumb/failures/hopeless cases."
In fact, when I got that full scholarship from a fancy prep school, and it was announced at the end of the year, many, many (mostly black) moms seemed so genuinely happy and excited for me --and one of my (black) friends told me, "Until I met you, I didn't think a poor person could be smart." That comment struck me. She was smart. She didn't realize it.
But all those (mostly black) moms who hugged me (even moms I didn't know hugged me) and seemed thrilled for me because I was going to a fancy school, they all seemed to think education was A-OK. I was not the lame white nerdy kid who got the scholarship or whatever. I was the regular poor kid who got the scholarship, and wasn't that exciting? I.e., I was "one of them"--and I'm not sure I would be considered "one of them" in our hyper-racialized society 40 years later.
So...I don't know. There are so many pieces to this elephant, and I've only got the one.
The top of this chapter is not up to par. Of course it's silly and damaging to punish kids differentially by race, by lightening punishment from a group of kids if they turn out to be overrepresented among the offenders. But why spend a paragraph trying to prove black kids are rougher than similarly situated white kids? The intuition is simply that poor kids are rougher than rich kids, and the cited evidence doesn't suggest anything to the contrary.
This might be the greatest weakness overall of this work: I've been reading "Racecraft" in parallel and it seems to me that John isn't taking enough pains to emphasize how much of this is really based on the self-perpetuating yet unscientific idea of "race". If you decide to focus on how poverty correlates with violence instead of "race", the correlation is so strong as to make a "racial" explanation uninteresting and not useful. And this is true of so many things, from perpetrated violence to received violence to sub-cultural attitudes on academics to academic success itself etc etc etc. And John has himself talked about this articulately in e.g. his podcasts with Glenn Loury. But it's falling into the insidious trap of letting things appear to be about race because that's the lens we chose to look at it through first.
The focus on "race" makes it appear that John believes these differences to be racial (or at the very least, racial-cultural) when you could simply substitute "poor" for "black" in the bit about discipline in schools and make exactly the same point
I agree with this in my limited experience. I grew up in a very diverse area. My HS was working class and also ESOL. Every race and nationality was represented. There were guns often brought to school. But everyone now seems to be a well adjusted adult and has a good job. Funny in light of what is happening now with the talk of anti-Asian hate crimes, the biggest problems with were Vietnamese and Koreans fighting each other. There were many more issues with kids whose families just escaped Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Guatemala than with African American kids. Though I guess I do remember a black girl trying to light my hair on fire. I think fighting and acting up comes from a mix of things and is definitely affected by home life. I also do think black kids get judged more harshly by authorities based on what I've seen.
John, I love your analysis of this topic. Maybe that’s because I am white and appreciate that you explain so many of the senseless (to me) arguments about these matters many white woke/elect friends and co-workers spout constantly. I’ve presented your work to some as counterpoint to the KenDiAngeloian perspective, but the lack of any intellectual curiosity about alternative points of view is breathtaking and frustrating, made especially so by the fact I work in the field of informal science education (think science center or science museum) with people with backgrounds in science. They seem completely disinterested in considering any alternative hypotheses. Keep up the good work and here’s to the hope your message works its way into wider circles of the population b
I have on more thought that I'd like to add as a continuation of my comments below, particularly in regard to the discussion in this chapter of elite universities and colleges.
I highly recommend Daniel Markovits' book The Meritocracy Trap, in which he argues that the meritocratic ideal that justifies or animates elite universities, and other elite spaces is a net destructive force for those who seem to benefit the most from meritocracy, and for everybody else too. Markovits' analysis of why the meritocratic elite tend to be so woke has crystalized thoughts I've had about this topic that have been swirling around for a while. He is worth quoting at some length on this topic. Here is what he has to say:
"
" ...today inequality that appears justified (because of meritocracy) degrades both sides of the meritocratic divide. Meritocracy most obviously corrupts elite values by encouraging the view as Dreyden wrote,'that he, who best deserves, alone may reign.' Less obviously, but no less consequentially, meritocracy also makes elites at once defensive and complacent; excessively sensitive to the harms associated with unmeritocratic discrimination, and numb to the harm produced by meritocracy itself.
On the one hand, meritocratic elites make prejudice that has no meritocratic gloss-- based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality-- into a cardinal and unforgivable sin that must be suppressed absolutely and without regard for the cost. Widely embraced norms that govern elite life in the everyday, therefore require a degree of caution and moralism around identity politics that has no analog for the other parts of morality. Elite society forgives (and even ignores) selfishness, intemperance, cruelty, and other long -recognized vices, but bigotry and prejiduce, if exposed, can end a career. Such moralism seems selective, out of sympathy with life's complexities and confusions, and sometimes out of proportion to the harms at stake. Decent people outside the elite recognize that bigotry is wrong, but they tend to regard prejudice as an ordinary vice, like greed or meanness, to be condemned, but also met with an apt indulgence for human frailty. Bigotry does cause immense individual and social harm, and charges that elite institutions- especially universities-succumb to political correctness can be politically motivated and are often made in bad faith. But they capture the important truth that elite denunciations of prejudice can be be excessively hard and, partly for this reason, unduly brittle.
The elite's intense concern for diversity and inclusion also carries an odor of self-dealing. Unlike other vices, prejudice attacks meritocracy's moral foundations, raising the specter that advantage more broadly follows invidious privilege rather than merit. Meritocracy demands extreme vigilance against prejudice in order to shore up the inequalities it seeks to legitimate against their increasing size and instability. The elaborate and fragile identity politics that govern elite life follow inexorably from the elite's meritocratic foundations."
On the other hand, meritocracy inclines elites to chauvinistic contempt or even cruelty regarding inequalities that cannot be cast in terms of identity politics. Political correctness does not denounce calling rural communities "backward," southerners "rednecks," Appalachians, "white trash," and the build of the United States "flyover country."
page 60-61.
There is a lot to unpack in there. My main takeaway is that a critique of antiracist excess is not coherent without a deeper critique of the meritocratic myth that justifies the existence of elite universities (and other elite spaces). We don't need to open up elite spaces artificially to people from marginalized backgrounds. We need to dismantle these elite spaces, or radically transform their elite nature. Markowits lays out a much more thorough and convincing case of why this is so than I can here. Check it out.
Thanks for this. I live in what was once a more [than it is now] predominantly white suburb outside of Detroit. And when we opened our public schools to students outside of our district (Schools of Choice) in 1990’s, quite a few black students from Detroit enrolled in one of the high schools in our city. Well, I guess some of them were really behind where they should be to pass, so the school principal (who was white), set up a lunchtime and after school program for them as well as for white students who were behind to get the extra help they needed. He made arrangements with teachers (who are union employees, and it wasn’t in their contract) to do this. He was willing to fork over the extra cost. Well, the parents of the black students all complained that it was racist to do that. There were press stories. And eventually the principal backed down. I was floored. I thought, “What? When my kids struggle with a class or a subject, as one-income household at the time, we’ve had to sacrifice to pay tutors. No teachers were staying after school (especially on a regular basis) to help them. And you turned that opportunity down?! Wtf. What about your kids? Aren’t they worth making that extra investment in time and effort - and even though it may be inconvenient to you logistically?” And I was really upset that a principal who cared enough to do something like that had to deal with claims of racism and that mob mentality won.
People get out of religions they are emotionally tethered to every day. Your assertion that because it is a religion, that it is not practical to attempt to reason rings inaccurate and pessimistic. Maybe it’s not realistic to expect to use reason to talk them down in the moment, but regular exposure to otherwise reasonable people who do not share their zealotry is and must be an important reminder. Once they get to a place where they no longer need the emotional benefits that adhering to the tenets of the religion gives them, it is positively essential that they remember there are many people who also don’t need them. Once they are ready to get out of the pool, they need to know there are plenty of folks willing to help them up. They won’t be persuaded by your reasoned argument, no, but when needed, they will remember that the argument took place. This is important.
While I think McWhorter makes a strong case that the new church of woke is akin to a religion, I think his insistence that it truly *is* a religion may go just a bit too far. My own suspicion is that this wave of insanity will recede, perhaps in the face of some calamity or continuing decline in the United States, and future historians will look back on it as a curious bit of social contagion.
I could be wrong, of course. But I am genuinely encouraged by what I'm seeing, which is more and more otherwise liberal people rejecting the excesses and craziness of woke. I use the New York Times and Washington Post comment sections as a gauge on occasion, since the commenters are overwhelmingly liberal. More and more, their response to the latest woke baloney tilts toward rejection, sometimes overwhelmingly.
That's a good sign. I think there is a vast, sensible, anti-woke, anti-Trump middle that spills over traditional partisan dividing lines.
When a belief in woke gives someone license to adjudicate my thoughts and speech, label me heretic and sic the mob on me, excommunicate me from my job and/or tribe, and demand subservience, genuflection and penitence, it's a religion. Neither privilege, nor the lack thereof, confers upon anyone the right to act as my priest without my consent.
Just for some perspective, I grew up in a strict religious family and the first thing I did when I got a chance was to escape this environment. The common thread between these two belief systems is that someone other than yourself always ascribes to themselves the authority to define your value as a human being and judge your behavior as being in or out of conformance with some doctrine or set of rules. It is assumed that you have no right to think your own thoughts, feel your own feelings, or define your own worth. Shame, guilt, and gaslighting are prominent tools used to coerce conformity.
Doctrine and dogma rule all and are never empirically provable nor required to submit to rational inquiry. Your own knowingness and/or experience of the world is questioned and you are never allowed to be right.
I think it gives us a framework to consider the broader question of how have various cultures survived/moved out of hysterical periods throughout history? How have they regained their balance? We might be able to glean insights or clues that could help.
Beyond that, understanding the psychological aspects of religious fervor may help us develop approaches for dealing with people one on one. Or not. Personally, I have never had much success banking the passions of the convicted enough to get them to see me as a fellow human being nor grant me the benefit of the doubt. I am not really a person to them. I am just an abstract [insert label here]—a sinner, a problem to be solved, an obstacle to remove on their way toward their perfect Disneyland. The human mind is strangely addicted to "right" answers (ego wants to be safe above all) and becomes blinkered very quickly when it thinks it has found some.
I think this innate tendency combined with a deep, deep desire/impatience to extend the promise of America to all and sweep away the artificial divisions of the past (certainly a laudable goal) are leading many very smart people to ignore the elephant in the room - cultural impacts on individuals and their choices. Culture matters far more than anyone in the CRT movement is allowing for.
OK yes, I agree with all that. I guess I'm seeing a difference in the efficacy of talking about it as a 'religion' amongst ourselves vs telling woke people they are in a religion. The former has many uses as you pointed out, but saying it too loud so the woke can hear might makes things more unhelpfully contentious than they already are. In a practical sense, though, you can't have one without the other, especially in today's world. Given that, I guess sort of "never mind".
There's a part of me that sees it that way too, and if I had to put money on it that's what I'd think is going to go down over the long haul as well. (Of course, keeping rational dialogue as prominent in the national conversation as possible is an essential element to that outcome.)
I also bristle a bit at McWhorter's "actually is a religion" argument, not because I disagree with it, but because it exposes such a minefield. I'm in a weeks-long Twitter DM conversation with an anonymous woke person at the moment, who is utterly unmovable. irrational and endlessly fascinating. I wouldn't dream of bringing up the "actually a religion" argument to him because he'd blow a gasket and then where would we be.
Given the litany of enslavement, Jim Crow, exclusion from good jobs and neighborhoods and prosperity that followed, a core black population doesnt like anything "white." One can hardly blame them, even as they cut off their own chances. At the same time, a subculture perpetuates certain behaviors. Thirdly, some have internalized the blanket response that nothing is their fault. The resultant cocktail is toxic.
"Those are the facts" regarding black boys being more violent than other students in school. But if we accept this as fact, it does not mean we should not be asking the all important question of "why black boys are more violent in school?" Could that have something to do with structural racism? I think so, but I am open to other view points.
And why do you "think so".
Because I don't think black boys are genetically predisposed to be more violent than other boys. As McWhorter alludes to later in the article, this may be a legacy of racism rather than a current symptom. And it may have to do with the home and neighborhood environments these boys live in. And those environments may also be affected by the legacy of racism. Note that I said "something to do with it" and not "caused in their entirety by" structural racism.
So it's genetic predisposition or racism? The possibilities end there? Then how does one explain the fact that the vast majority of kids in inner city communities are good kids who manage to stay out of trouble? I grew up the inner-city in Brooklyn NY in the 60's when yoke of racism pressed much harder on the backs of black people. Trouble was color-blind and took down both white kids and black kids with impunity. I moved to a Jewish and Italian neighborhood when I was 16. My Jewish classmantes got better grades than the Italian kids. They got disciplined in school less than the Italian kids. A few of the Italian kids wound up in the Mob and did time. None of the Jewish kids. How does one explain such differences?
This of course does not mean that blacks have not suffered from racism. It doesn't mean that the effects of past discrimination no longer impact some. But it does point to the fact that reducing everything to race is simplistic and counter-productive. The issue is driven by poverty, culture, the obliteration of the family, the loss of spiritual ties within communities, the moral decline of the times and yes....race.
If you read my reply carefully, you will see that I am not reducing everything to race and mentioned other possibilities, such as home and neighborhood environments, which seems to agree with your point about Jewish and Italian kids.
You are correct. I just think its become a near reflex action today to ascribe race as the primary or sole cause of all that ails black people. I think that's a self-defeating way of looking at things. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that we ignore the reality of racism. Just don't make it more of a monstrosity than it actually is. You can use fire to warm your house or burn it down.
"The nut of the issue has always been that if we don't trace the problems to racism, then the only other possibility must be that black people are inherently deficient somehow." What are "the problems" though? For example, the NBA is 74% black and 17% white, The NFL is 69% black and 29% white. Presumably that inequality is NOT a result of discrimination. If we can live with the seeming fact that black people are better at basketball and football (on average) why is it such a huge deal if white people are better at math?
"only ticket to lifetime success". In the words of the Frinkazoid, that depends on how you define success. Do you have to be in the top quintile to be a success? Above the median income? Mathematically about 80% of the population will fail in the first metric and 50% will fail by the second.
My question would be what about the failures? Why can't they also have a good life? We can't all work high status, high paying jobs, and as more and more people get college degrees, that will be true of more college graduates too. It is not "career success" or jail any more than it is Yale or jail. There is, however, a lack of a safety net, but also a worry that too much of a safety net will become a hammock for many.
So much of what is preached by the Elect completely ignores American history in the context of contemporary world history. Everytime I'm accused of bearing responsibility for what ocurred in 1619 and beyond I am left to wonder exactly what my "ancestors" in Sicily were doing at that point in time. There's a good chance that we were being brutalized and subjegated by invaders and barbaric rulers. I'm also left wondering what life was like in other places in the world at that time. What common customs prevailed that one today might consider barbaric (child sacrifice, genital mutilation, etc.) ? What sort of economic and political systems ruled the day? What was daily life like for the surf, slave, woman, child , etc. outside of what is now America? I'd love to see someone....John perhaps...do a short encapsulation of world history from 1619 to the present day. It think it would paint a picture of common human suffering that is hidden by Elect ideology and highlight the enormous contributions made by Western Civilization to the betterment of the world. It's a perspective that needs to be understood.
One thing happening in 1619 was the Thirty Years War. It was just getting started. As I learned it, the result was about 10,000,000 dead Germans "Population losses for the whole of Germany are estimated at 1/3 of the city population and 2/5 of the rural population. It should be added that further losses were suffered in the devastation of the wars of Louis XIV and of the Nordic War." (from Hajo Holborn)
It's a religion, all right. Notes from last week's faculty meeting: The population of our university preparation program is mostly Chinese nationals. So the concern was how to make them feel "safe" given all of this Anti-Asian Hate. This on the tail end of emails that denounced the shooting in Atlanta (which ought to go without saying) along with testimony to how the US has been anti-Asian for centuries, listing various crimes and laws against Asians dating back over a hundred years. How this could seem "welcoming" and "safe" is beyond me. One Asian faculty member claimed that she is afraid to leave her apartment because of all the "hate" out there. Even though our program is advertised as preparing students for art and design fields, we were asked how we teach anti-racism in our classes. One faculty member said she has them read a story about being discriminated against, as she had been when she first came to the US because she is 'brown,' which was hilarious to me because I have been working with her for over fifteen years and never noticed that she is "brown." Her writing assignment -- for young Chinese nationals -- requires them to provide a personal narrative on their experience with racism in the United States (this is NYC), which for all intents and purposes forces them to find it in order to get points for doing their homework. But the real kicker came when someone posited that our students need to "see themselves" in the materials we assign. One woman "realized" that she was assigning too many white men, so she replaced an essay on the same subject but written by a black man, and this was "better." I am still scratching my chin trying to figure out how a room full of wealthy 18-year-old Chinese women would "see themselves" in an essay written by a black man, but not in an essay written by a white man. This was followed by several testimonies to "realizing the harms their whiteness had caused." I could see my tortured expression in my zoom box. How to respond to that -- I wanted to say -- You go on ahead and suck up that narcissistic abuse. But I had already risked my position by insisting that we not impose ideological perspectives on students -- it's one thing to introduce them to the ideas, quite another to say: I think it is very important for them to understand that there is systemic racism.
I feel like the central problem revealed by this unfortunate story you tell is that all the actors are reading mindlessly from a mediocre script. I've experienced similar meetings, though thankfully, not quite as over the top as what you describe. I always feel in such a context that people are giving up their humanity- their beautiful, weird, complicated, humanity- in favor of being on the "right" side of history, or something.
I'm trying to resist the urge to deny those reading mindlessly from the script their humanity- even though they're kind of asking for it! Maybe they're seeing something I'm missing. Maybe not. Hey, we're all just flawed humans walking the earth trying to figure it out. I don't want to just read from my own skeptical script. I want to listen, learn, and engage. I've done that a little.
I'm curious how you do navigate these kinds of meetings and what the response is.
You raise a good point -- one doesn't want to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. On the other hand, there is a complete lack of logic to this script that evokes just about every dystopian situation I can think of. Just as we shouldn't obligate anyone else to apologize for their -- Chinese-ness, or their Blackness, nor should whites apologize for their 'Whiteness.' This smacks of pre-genocide. There was a strident insistence that the moral perspective on the Atlanta shootings was racism -- someone even argued that the primary source could be lying about it -- as if he hadn't done enough damage already? (And why is it "worse" to attack someone of another race, when attacking someone regardless of race is just plain wrong?) I go into these meetings telling myself to just listen, but it gets so ridiculously self-serving and black and white that I can't sit idly by -- it's like allowing a child to run out in front of a car. It's also, dare I say, triggering. Years ago, a black student threatened me with a knifing over a grade, and the administration treated the situation as -- well she's white and he's black so she must be a racist -- even though other students complained. But those students were not Black. It wasn't until Black students complained that the administration would take seriously a student who not only threatened me, but other professors in the department. Imagine telling a female instructor that "he has a right to an education" after he told you he would give you "a buck fifty" and was threatening other students with this as well. That's where this seems to be going. Impunity for one race, no due process for the other. And we have plenty of fodder from history to tell us that this is not where we want to go, and yet we are speeding towards it.
First, the assertion that prior to 1863 black people were slaves is not exactly true. While most black people in the South were slaves, and continued to be until 1865, not all were and blacks in the North most definitely were not. Furthermore, thousands of blacks owned slaves. Second, I have my doubts about the claims that white teachers in the 60s and 70s were "racist." No doubt some were but remember that the civil rights movement was a product of the 50s, not the 70s. As for "Jim Crow," segregation - which primarily consisted of segregated schools - existed only in the South and Midwest. The facts are that whites and blacks have coexisted and worked together all along, even during slavery although slaves were owned and provided food and shelter while poor whites worked for it. I suspect "the Elites" are more a product of politics than anything else.
I'm pretty sure slaves had to work. I could be wrong about that though.
Along the lines of the-Elect-as-religion, Ed West at UnHerd has a new piece on how diversity training represents American Calvinism, (re-)imported now into the UK: https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-tyranny-of-diversity-training/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=242a49a77c&mc_eid=e2abfdf2a4
"But in reality, cultural traits often persist beyond their original stimulus, having become subconsciously transmitted habit."
I often think -- but would never say out loud -- that the legacy of slavery has badly damaged black people in the US, but not in ways that would get me feted as the Wokest White Lady At The Charity Mixer.
Think about it. When you are working as a slave for someone else's enrichment and not your own, isn't refusal to work as hard as you can a form of rebellion? To slack off, to get away with shoddy work, is a form of self-esteem or righteous rebellion against injustice. To a slave, slacking off is a noble act, a small blow against injustice since your hard work would only put money in the pocket of your oppressor. That's the true poison of slavery: deeply engrained learned helplessness that persists long past when it was relevant.
The thing is, the rules have changed now. Most of us do work to put money in the pockets of others (Jeff Bezos has just WAY THE F*CK TOO MUCH MONEY, seriously -- no one needs that much money, people do not grasp how much 100 billion of anything is), but we also can work to better ourselves. We get paychecks, and we can earn more through learning and working well, even if we can't get to Zuckerf*cker status purely through virtuous hard work.
But that attitude that slacking off is a blow against the oppressor remains in the minds of those who have a legacy of slavery in their culture. I think that's that's the most destructive thing about the legacy of slavery: now that we can actually benefit from our own hard work (and we can, no matter what the brocialists would have us think), some of us are still living in a culture that thinks that shooting themselves in the foot by slacking off is an blow against injustice.
But I dare not say that out loud. No one dares to say it out loud, that the most destructive legacy of slavery is to have programmed a whole group of Americans that they can never, ever get ahead by dint of their own hard work in the 21st century because their hard work and ambition benefitted only their oppressors in the 19th century.
But how have we arrived at the point where saying out loud the precise way that the legacy of slavery has crippled Black Americans would get my dark white ass cancelled? How the hell can we solve this problem that continues to dog Black Americans if we can't even describe it out loud?!
I also felt I should address what you said about disadvantaged students who can't take in ideas quickly. I don't think that's the problem, the inability to think or learn quickly. In my experience as a disadvantaged kid who was also a math prodigy, the biggest problems I had were caused by the absence of cultural capital, little things that had nothing to do with how fast I could think. I ran rings around pretty much everyone else, including a lot of rich kids who were freaked out by it. But what I lacked was:
1. Parents who knew professors who could get me jobs in their labs over the summer,
2. People who could tell me that while "Who's Who In American High School Students" was a book-seller scam, Phi Beta Kappa was something I should have put on my resume,
3. People who could tell me that the opportunity grants I got were not the same as the Teas Scholar status I won by my utterly insane grades,
4. People who could tell me not to listen to the high school counselor who had no damned clue what to do with someone like me and could fob me off on someone who could give better advice,
5. People who could tell me proper lab etiquette, and the difference between a counselor and a mentor ...
and on and on the list goes. This is what I was missing, and there is no easy way to address these problems. The only way they can be addressed is for parents to get better educated themselves before they have kids. If your parents have a college education, you already have a huge leg up. Mine didn't and could hence give me zero help at all when I moved into a world they couldn't prepare me for. The single biggest thing you could do for your kids is to have ambition and a g/d college education yourself.
Anyhow.
I suggest a book "Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro slavery" by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. It might surprise you to learn that slaves were frequently rewarded for hard work with money, a plot of land to grow their own crops (often for sale), better housing, being taught technical skills such as carpentry and smithing (from which they could earn money), and being made supervisors. Many plantation overseers and most work gang supervisors were black slaves. It's only since the welfare system in the 1960s that black Americans have been taught not to work, as John points out.
It is my understanding that blacks coming out of slavery did not display the form of rebellion you describe. In fact, if folks like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are to be believed, they came out of slavery a liberated people eager to make their way in the world through the sweat of their brow. It is also my understanding from the above noted folks that during the 1930's and 40's, the black unemployment rate was as low as the white unemployment rate and that the black family, while continuing to suffer from the scourge of racism, remained strong and intact. If you have not already done so read Shelby Steele's The Content of their Character which, in my opinion, does a better job of explaining black and white dynamics in America than any book ever written.
This is heartening to read, for all oppressed peoples. That the desire to be more than what you've been can survive even that. I'll look up that book.
It's actually a pearl that runs through all of human history...the triumph over oppression, poverty, etc. While we should be mindful of the black experience in America, we should not pretend that theirs is the only history filled with tragedy and oppression. A woe is me outlook on life guarantees that you'll continue to suffer and struggle. This is as true for groups of people as it is for individuals.
I think you are on to something in terms of the learned helplessness.
Also, I had a similar experience of not having useful guidance from the adults around me - much of it due to parochial thinking and slightly limp educations.
Do you have any evidence that black culture, informed by the legacy of slavery, engenders slacking off in order to subconsciously stick it to the man?
What sort of evidence do you want to see? If you mean am I a 30-year veteran social psychologist, then the answer is no. I suspect you aren't, either. But "learned helplessness" is not a new concept, and it's been well-researched.
I'd be interested in knowing exactly where that sense of helplessness comes from. Is it soley derived from the cumulitive affects of slavery and racism or are other factors involved, factors that are completely under the control of black people.
Could be ethnography, personal narratives, or social psychology, as you suggest.
Really anything other than speculation.
Why does the idea that learned helplessness is part of the legacy of slavery offend you so much? You may be trying to hide it and acting "academic" about it, but it's not working. Slavery is destructive and damaging in many ways, and it's a perfect breeding ground for the spiritual poison of learned helplessness.
I can't believe that I'm actually having to explain to anyone in this day and age that slavery leaves a destructive legacy. Do you think it's a-okay to own people like furniture, and that it does no damage to those who endured it? That they can simply shake it off? That anyone who has endured abuse can instantly act like it never happened? That intergenerational trauma is a myth?
Slavery is evil for actual reasons, among them being individual and group psychological and cultural destruction.
I'm not offended by your idea. I'm asking if you have any evidence to support it, or if it's just an incubating notion you have. It doesn't need to be academic evidence. I'd actually love to read anything you have! Maybe you'll convince me (and others) that you're onto something.
Also, I am not disputing that slavery has left a destructive legacy, generally speaking, or in any number of specific ways. Rather, I am asking you to develop and support the very particular hypothesis that you put forward- namely that learned helplessness is super prevalent amongst American decedents of enslaved people because their ancestors slacked off or did shoddy work in order to raise a middle finger at the slave master. You seem to be saying that a cultural trait that was adaptive then, is now maladaptive. What you haven't done though, is demonstrate that this cultural trait existed during slavery, or that it exists now, or that to the extent it exists now, it is because of this legacy of slavery.
I have read a few slave narratives and don't recall anything like this picture you paint. My recollection is that the punishment for any insubordinate behavior, or any perceived insubordination, was so brutal and public- as to highly discourage such behavior.
(1) This is the best chapter yet. (2) Seeing the word "ideas" in quotation marks in reference to Kendi's "ideas" made me laugh both times I saw it.
The idea that post-slavery black Americans were hugely in favor of school is no surprise. That black kids (who had bad experiences being bussed into white schools) decided that school is "white" is no surprise, I guess? However, I didn't encounter that, exactly, from my black friends in the majority-black school I attended in the late '70s -- and bussing was around then, still, but not at my school (and I don't remember the details?) but perhaps the kids at my school didn't have that association with school being "white" because their school was majority black?
Well...trying to think back... at that particular school at least, the black students weren't singled out to be treated as hopeless cases destined to failure by a few hostile mostly-white teachers in a mostly-white context, right? So the kids didn't seem to associate school with "white"? At least at _that_ school at _that_ time?
BUT... what was it like? Well, my memory is that we were _all_ treated like hopeless cases, en masse. Children of the working poor and poor, with no expectations for success or an interesting future, with the result that the feeling in my school wasn't "doing well in school is a white thing" but rather, "Poor people are dumb/failures/hopeless cases."
In fact, when I got that full scholarship from a fancy prep school, and it was announced at the end of the year, many, many (mostly black) moms seemed so genuinely happy and excited for me --and one of my (black) friends told me, "Until I met you, I didn't think a poor person could be smart." That comment struck me. She was smart. She didn't realize it.
But all those (mostly black) moms who hugged me (even moms I didn't know hugged me) and seemed thrilled for me because I was going to a fancy school, they all seemed to think education was A-OK. I was not the lame white nerdy kid who got the scholarship or whatever. I was the regular poor kid who got the scholarship, and wasn't that exciting? I.e., I was "one of them"--and I'm not sure I would be considered "one of them" in our hyper-racialized society 40 years later.
So...I don't know. There are so many pieces to this elephant, and I've only got the one.
The sooner this comes out in book form....the greater.
(I am aware that other contractual commitments prevent that from happening now.)
The top of this chapter is not up to par. Of course it's silly and damaging to punish kids differentially by race, by lightening punishment from a group of kids if they turn out to be overrepresented among the offenders. But why spend a paragraph trying to prove black kids are rougher than similarly situated white kids? The intuition is simply that poor kids are rougher than rich kids, and the cited evidence doesn't suggest anything to the contrary.
This might be the greatest weakness overall of this work: I've been reading "Racecraft" in parallel and it seems to me that John isn't taking enough pains to emphasize how much of this is really based on the self-perpetuating yet unscientific idea of "race". If you decide to focus on how poverty correlates with violence instead of "race", the correlation is so strong as to make a "racial" explanation uninteresting and not useful. And this is true of so many things, from perpetrated violence to received violence to sub-cultural attitudes on academics to academic success itself etc etc etc. And John has himself talked about this articulately in e.g. his podcasts with Glenn Loury. But it's falling into the insidious trap of letting things appear to be about race because that's the lens we chose to look at it through first.
The focus on "race" makes it appear that John believes these differences to be racial (or at the very least, racial-cultural) when you could simply substitute "poor" for "black" in the bit about discipline in schools and make exactly the same point
I agree with this in my limited experience. I grew up in a very diverse area. My HS was working class and also ESOL. Every race and nationality was represented. There were guns often brought to school. But everyone now seems to be a well adjusted adult and has a good job. Funny in light of what is happening now with the talk of anti-Asian hate crimes, the biggest problems with were Vietnamese and Koreans fighting each other. There were many more issues with kids whose families just escaped Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Guatemala than with African American kids. Though I guess I do remember a black girl trying to light my hair on fire. I think fighting and acting up comes from a mix of things and is definitely affected by home life. I also do think black kids get judged more harshly by authorities based on what I've seen.
Breathtaking take down of anti-racism that left me hopeful and depressed.
John, I love your analysis of this topic. Maybe that’s because I am white and appreciate that you explain so many of the senseless (to me) arguments about these matters many white woke/elect friends and co-workers spout constantly. I’ve presented your work to some as counterpoint to the KenDiAngeloian perspective, but the lack of any intellectual curiosity about alternative points of view is breathtaking and frustrating, made especially so by the fact I work in the field of informal science education (think science center or science museum) with people with backgrounds in science. They seem completely disinterested in considering any alternative hypotheses. Keep up the good work and here’s to the hope your message works its way into wider circles of the population b
I have on more thought that I'd like to add as a continuation of my comments below, particularly in regard to the discussion in this chapter of elite universities and colleges.
I highly recommend Daniel Markovits' book The Meritocracy Trap, in which he argues that the meritocratic ideal that justifies or animates elite universities, and other elite spaces is a net destructive force for those who seem to benefit the most from meritocracy, and for everybody else too. Markovits' analysis of why the meritocratic elite tend to be so woke has crystalized thoughts I've had about this topic that have been swirling around for a while. He is worth quoting at some length on this topic. Here is what he has to say:
"
" ...today inequality that appears justified (because of meritocracy) degrades both sides of the meritocratic divide. Meritocracy most obviously corrupts elite values by encouraging the view as Dreyden wrote,'that he, who best deserves, alone may reign.' Less obviously, but no less consequentially, meritocracy also makes elites at once defensive and complacent; excessively sensitive to the harms associated with unmeritocratic discrimination, and numb to the harm produced by meritocracy itself.
On the one hand, meritocratic elites make prejudice that has no meritocratic gloss-- based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality-- into a cardinal and unforgivable sin that must be suppressed absolutely and without regard for the cost. Widely embraced norms that govern elite life in the everyday, therefore require a degree of caution and moralism around identity politics that has no analog for the other parts of morality. Elite society forgives (and even ignores) selfishness, intemperance, cruelty, and other long -recognized vices, but bigotry and prejiduce, if exposed, can end a career. Such moralism seems selective, out of sympathy with life's complexities and confusions, and sometimes out of proportion to the harms at stake. Decent people outside the elite recognize that bigotry is wrong, but they tend to regard prejudice as an ordinary vice, like greed or meanness, to be condemned, but also met with an apt indulgence for human frailty. Bigotry does cause immense individual and social harm, and charges that elite institutions- especially universities-succumb to political correctness can be politically motivated and are often made in bad faith. But they capture the important truth that elite denunciations of prejudice can be be excessively hard and, partly for this reason, unduly brittle.
The elite's intense concern for diversity and inclusion also carries an odor of self-dealing. Unlike other vices, prejudice attacks meritocracy's moral foundations, raising the specter that advantage more broadly follows invidious privilege rather than merit. Meritocracy demands extreme vigilance against prejudice in order to shore up the inequalities it seeks to legitimate against their increasing size and instability. The elaborate and fragile identity politics that govern elite life follow inexorably from the elite's meritocratic foundations."
On the other hand, meritocracy inclines elites to chauvinistic contempt or even cruelty regarding inequalities that cannot be cast in terms of identity politics. Political correctness does not denounce calling rural communities "backward," southerners "rednecks," Appalachians, "white trash," and the build of the United States "flyover country."
page 60-61.
There is a lot to unpack in there. My main takeaway is that a critique of antiracist excess is not coherent without a deeper critique of the meritocratic myth that justifies the existence of elite universities (and other elite spaces). We don't need to open up elite spaces artificially to people from marginalized backgrounds. We need to dismantle these elite spaces, or radically transform their elite nature. Markowits lays out a much more thorough and convincing case of why this is so than I can here. Check it out.
Michael Sandel makes similar arguments in a more recent book, "The Tyranny of Merit".
Thanks for this. I live in what was once a more [than it is now] predominantly white suburb outside of Detroit. And when we opened our public schools to students outside of our district (Schools of Choice) in 1990’s, quite a few black students from Detroit enrolled in one of the high schools in our city. Well, I guess some of them were really behind where they should be to pass, so the school principal (who was white), set up a lunchtime and after school program for them as well as for white students who were behind to get the extra help they needed. He made arrangements with teachers (who are union employees, and it wasn’t in their contract) to do this. He was willing to fork over the extra cost. Well, the parents of the black students all complained that it was racist to do that. There were press stories. And eventually the principal backed down. I was floored. I thought, “What? When my kids struggle with a class or a subject, as one-income household at the time, we’ve had to sacrifice to pay tutors. No teachers were staying after school (especially on a regular basis) to help them. And you turned that opportunity down?! Wtf. What about your kids? Aren’t they worth making that extra investment in time and effort - and even though it may be inconvenient to you logistically?” And I was really upset that a principal who cared enough to do something like that had to deal with claims of racism and that mob mentality won.
People get out of religions they are emotionally tethered to every day. Your assertion that because it is a religion, that it is not practical to attempt to reason rings inaccurate and pessimistic. Maybe it’s not realistic to expect to use reason to talk them down in the moment, but regular exposure to otherwise reasonable people who do not share their zealotry is and must be an important reminder. Once they get to a place where they no longer need the emotional benefits that adhering to the tenets of the religion gives them, it is positively essential that they remember there are many people who also don’t need them. Once they are ready to get out of the pool, they need to know there are plenty of folks willing to help them up. They won’t be persuaded by your reasoned argument, no, but when needed, they will remember that the argument took place. This is important.
While I think McWhorter makes a strong case that the new church of woke is akin to a religion, I think his insistence that it truly *is* a religion may go just a bit too far. My own suspicion is that this wave of insanity will recede, perhaps in the face of some calamity or continuing decline in the United States, and future historians will look back on it as a curious bit of social contagion.
I could be wrong, of course. But I am genuinely encouraged by what I'm seeing, which is more and more otherwise liberal people rejecting the excesses and craziness of woke. I use the New York Times and Washington Post comment sections as a gauge on occasion, since the commenters are overwhelmingly liberal. More and more, their response to the latest woke baloney tilts toward rejection, sometimes overwhelmingly.
That's a good sign. I think there is a vast, sensible, anti-woke, anti-Trump middle that spills over traditional partisan dividing lines.
When a belief in woke gives someone license to adjudicate my thoughts and speech, label me heretic and sic the mob on me, excommunicate me from my job and/or tribe, and demand subservience, genuflection and penitence, it's a religion. Neither privilege, nor the lack thereof, confers upon anyone the right to act as my priest without my consent.
Just for some perspective, I grew up in a strict religious family and the first thing I did when I got a chance was to escape this environment. The common thread between these two belief systems is that someone other than yourself always ascribes to themselves the authority to define your value as a human being and judge your behavior as being in or out of conformance with some doctrine or set of rules. It is assumed that you have no right to think your own thoughts, feel your own feelings, or define your own worth. Shame, guilt, and gaslighting are prominent tools used to coerce conformity.
Doctrine and dogma rule all and are never empirically provable nor required to submit to rational inquiry. Your own knowingness and/or experience of the world is questioned and you are never allowed to be right.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm bringing up a purely tactical argument. Where does shouting 'religion' get anyone? That's the question. Eyes on the prize.
I think it gives us a framework to consider the broader question of how have various cultures survived/moved out of hysterical periods throughout history? How have they regained their balance? We might be able to glean insights or clues that could help.
Beyond that, understanding the psychological aspects of religious fervor may help us develop approaches for dealing with people one on one. Or not. Personally, I have never had much success banking the passions of the convicted enough to get them to see me as a fellow human being nor grant me the benefit of the doubt. I am not really a person to them. I am just an abstract [insert label here]—a sinner, a problem to be solved, an obstacle to remove on their way toward their perfect Disneyland. The human mind is strangely addicted to "right" answers (ego wants to be safe above all) and becomes blinkered very quickly when it thinks it has found some.
I think this innate tendency combined with a deep, deep desire/impatience to extend the promise of America to all and sweep away the artificial divisions of the past (certainly a laudable goal) are leading many very smart people to ignore the elephant in the room - cultural impacts on individuals and their choices. Culture matters far more than anyone in the CRT movement is allowing for.
OK yes, I agree with all that. I guess I'm seeing a difference in the efficacy of talking about it as a 'religion' amongst ourselves vs telling woke people they are in a religion. The former has many uses as you pointed out, but saying it too loud so the woke can hear might makes things more unhelpfully contentious than they already are. In a practical sense, though, you can't have one without the other, especially in today's world. Given that, I guess sort of "never mind".
When belief in woke becomes a moral imperative, it is most definitely a religion.
There's a part of me that sees it that way too, and if I had to put money on it that's what I'd think is going to go down over the long haul as well. (Of course, keeping rational dialogue as prominent in the national conversation as possible is an essential element to that outcome.)
I also bristle a bit at McWhorter's "actually is a religion" argument, not because I disagree with it, but because it exposes such a minefield. I'm in a weeks-long Twitter DM conversation with an anonymous woke person at the moment, who is utterly unmovable. irrational and endlessly fascinating. I wouldn't dream of bringing up the "actually a religion" argument to him because he'd blow a gasket and then where would we be.