"THE ELECT" WILL BE PUBLISHED AS A BOOK. SOON.
As some of my faithful readers will have noticed already, I’ve been preoccupied of late with the publication of my newest book, Nine Nasty Words, which was released by Avery Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House) this month. Things are looking like it’s on a path to be my best-selling book ever – much to my surprise it’s a New York Times bestseller this week.
However, questions about the origin stories of motherfucker notwithstanding, for months now I’ve been asked almost every day when or whether the material I’ve been introducing here as my work in progress, The Elect, will be available in book form.
I’m delighted now to be able to answer that question. That manuscript will be released as a book by Portfolio (also a Penguin Random House imprint) in October. It will be published under a new title: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.
I should mention that the often sharp and insightful subscriber comments, as well as the brilliant editorial counsel of Bria Sandford at Portfolio, have already made Woke Racism significantly different from the The Elect excerpts. Woke Racism will express what the Substack excerpts did and then some. It will still analyze Third-Wave Antiracism as a religion. It will still make legions of black people see me as a race traitor. It will still make legions of white people see me as a tragically deluded white supremacist with brown skin who merits dismissal and ostracization.
And amidst all of that, it will still represent what I consider the most pro-black book I have ever written.
But this does mean that from now on, my Substack “newsletter” will be exactly that. I am glad many of you have enjoyed my posts here beyond the The Elect excerpts, and they will continue, at the rate of once or twice (and I hope, more often, twice) a week. I have loved communicating to you as well as the feedback I get. Let’s keep this going.
Only: get “The Elect” as a real book, Woke Racism, around Halloween. Here, get my take on things as they happen, unfiltered.
Auguste Comte, founder of sociology, also founded a Religion of Humanity. Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”) remarked, aptly, that it amounted to: “Catholicism, minus Christianity.” So too the religion of the Elect may be thought of as Evangelical Calvinism, minus Christianity. “Calvinism,” because of Double Decree (eternally and ahead of time, elected to cosmic Oppressed status, or damned to cosmic Oppressor status); “Evangelical,” because of a narrow psychologically reductionist focus (to the exclusion of broader, worldly questions) on the praeterite soul, its chastisement and repentance; “minus Christianity,” because there is no eschatology and no corresponding redemption.
The concept of race traitor is so incredibly tribal, so very anti-human. Whites that transgressed the color line had a very specific label applied to them, meaning in essence, race traitor. All it meant was that you betrayed the tribal identity. And the accusation? It is meant to tap into the very real human fear of ostracization. Enforced banishment, unless a person has been able to find an identity separate from the group in which they have found personal identity, is a terrible thing. It creates a loss of self-identity and throws the person into an existential crisis of, often, terrible proportions. That is why it is such a powerful threat. It is, in part, why so many people go along with the woke mobs whether they believe in their orientation or not. But as the trend continues, more and more people are finding the courage to take a stand, to risk banishment and exile. It is one of the things that keeps up the good will in me, that brings me not optimism but hope, which is a kind of faith rather than the belief that things will turn out well, that I will be safe, that life will go on as it has gone on. It is faith in those who will not break faith with themselves, refuse to become the enemies of their souls or memories.