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.
I just ordered "Nine Nasty Words", and while I was at it I got '"Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" too. Though I prefer hardcovers, I had to go with paperback for the latter, as hardcover copies started at $120!
You have made a significant contribution to this critical issue. I wish it could be called a conversation but I fear it remains a monologue as the awoke are unwilling and incapable of engaging in dialog. I appreciate your willingness to consider reader input and look forward to a book more appropriate to the crisis at hand. With its flaws, the manuscript was thoroughly “pro-Black.” Congrats on pending publication.
While it is interesting to analyze The Elect as a religion, I find it just as fruitful to frame this in terms of the secular. The Elect don’t actually believe in Original Sin, they believe if two babies were to play together and if one happened to be white, and the other happened to be black, nothing but nice normal healthy baby behavior would take place. Lets just take this for granted, the take away is Racism is learned behavior... and white people are just naturally racist is where the conflation begins. The naturally racist is being mistaken as from conception. Original sin IS from conception, a baby most definitely has original sin if we are using the strictly theological definition of what that phrase means. But provided racism is framed as a learned behavior by The Elect, it can’t be present at conception if it is from something learned as a child. This demonstrates that the Elect believe the problem is society’s corrupting influence ala Jean Jacques Rousseau. White people just happen to be on top of the materialist food chain, and the primal instincts of this dominance drove suppression and oppression naturally out of Marxist determinism. I could go on with critiquing revolutionary ideology, why that is actually anti-theological on a basis of good faith (pardon the pun). I think I’ve made my point.
"if we are using the strictly theological definition of what that phrase means"
So, that's the thing, my brother… I feel quite confident in suggesting that McWhorter is NOT using a strictly theological definition of what that phrase(or any other specific religious reference employed) means. With all due respect, I think you are perhaps getting tangled up in the specifics of the metaphor, and perhaps missing the point. He's not making a metaphysical claim, and to the extent that original sin is employed in the metaphor, there's NOTHING soteriological or eschatological, other than an oblique reference to the fact that even the lowly religious folk offer a path to redemption, something notably absent within the Woke community.
I'm not sure if you've followed the Glenn Show over the past year or so, but McWhorter wrote this book out of disgust towards self-righteous, virtue-signaling phonies who mistake their upper-middle class status and putative education with a legitimate intellectual OR moral superiority. And given their dismissive condescension towards evangelicals, nothing serves as a better polemical comparison than to illustrate the manner in which they embody an anti-socratic, anti-intellectual, and morally confused psychology that not only RESEMBLES that of the tent-revival, flat-earther creationists, but they actually reveal themselves to be identical to those for whom they hold so much contempt.
I strongly disagree. They might claim that they don’t believe in original sin as in literally hating and blaming a baby for being born white, when they’re called on it, because they know how ugly and crazy and alienating it can sound. But in self-serving, slippery, motte and bailey fashion, many actually do believe in it and will revert to that kind of maximalist claim and condemnation as often and as far as they can get away with it. They literally believe in intergenerational collective guilt. Lying, toxic Queen Three Names at the NYT, for example, has often openly gloated that one of her goals has been to directly condemn, inflict suffering and guilt, and extract and extort payback from all white people today - simply as a condition of their skin color, based solely on the misdeeds of entirely unrelated, historically distant people whose only connection to them is a somewhat similar skin pigmentation. To her and many of her ilk, their guilt is in St. Kendi’s phrase “stamped on the skin”. It’s remarkable by the way how plainly many of these neoracist “antiracist” types giddily seek to inflict what they claim to abhor; how much their game is about racist hatred and revenge. It’s not just the discrimination today in response to past discrimination; discrimination tomorrow (and you can bet forever) in response to any hint of discrimination they imagine, assert, or invent today or after. White skin itself is sufficient grounds to cast blame and retaliate. On what other grounds would they abuse little kids, as young as they can get at them - in preschool and kindergarten and via all media, by making them feel lesser, feel guilty, cause them to hate themselves and turn them against their parents, solely on the basis of their skin color? They aren’t just calling the parents in and browbeating them. They are - and I use these words very advisedly - literally abusing very young children and seeking to destroy their familial bonds out of an ideology of inherent racial guilt, blame, and hatred.
Lets say I agree with everything you just said as a matter of fact. The question is does this make them believers in original sin. The Catholic church abuses children, but not because they believe in original sin. Even though they do believe in it strictly speaking. This is the problem I have with analyzing this as a religion, it misses so much of why this is wrong in a chance to make some cheap shot equivalence in an attempt to sound like a third rate Christopher Hitchens that misses The Elect’s own special brand of terrible human being. I wouldn’t call them The Elect, I would call them communists, but that’s just me. If there is a religion to blame it’s old fashioned Christianity. Except Civil Rights was more effective and more fair when religious leaders where at the forefront, at least in the United States.
Just got cancelled from my Black Lives Book Club for saying that the 74 million people who voted for Trump are not all racists and may have good faith reasons to vote Republican. The club is entirely white, except for my decades long black friend who leads the meetings (and has disowned me, a Democrat). For my transgression he told me (with anger) that I supported the caste system and white supremacy. It’s noteworthy that he is famously known among his friends for his calm demeanor and decency to other people. Woke Racism is spot on. And only a religion could so corrupt such a kind and decent person. Kendi and DiAngelo are the guiding lights of the club.
one especially good reason NOT to vote for republicans is that 70% of that 74 million people believe the election was stolen. and 99% of congressmen and senators know it wasn't stolen but are maintaining the big lie out of political expedience. dishonesty, irrationality, and a lack of ethics is not going to make us great again. I'll stay an independent, thank you very much
Josh, I suspect your percentages are not accurate, as your post sounds like a political opinion. Lee is saying that he got cancelled for telling the truth, ie that Republicans have no more racists in their ranks than Democrats (the unions had many members who could not bring themselves to vote for Obama) and that voting Republican was as much a vote against Hillary as a vote for Trump. Twisting that opinion into a support for white supremacy and a "caste" system shows a derangement of reasoning.
Josh I don't think Lee is insinuating that people should vote Republican, just that instead of demonizing absolutely everyone who voted Republican we should try to understand what reasons one might have for voting Republican so we can try to pull those people away from the party. Admittedly the Republican Party's base includes a great many people who are virulently racist and bigoted, many of them irredeemabley so. But to chalk them all up as being iredeemable bigots is both highly reductive, and politically defeatist in nature.
I think the new title is right on the mark. Do you hear the sense of betrayal in the plea of Sherrie Jennings? She's the Minneapolis grandmother of a ten-year-old boy who had been gravely injured in a drive-by shooting.( https://youtu.be/p7qbpJqQpgg?t=195 ). "Why is this community not angry?" she asks a news conference where city leaders unveiled a community policing plan. "You all tell me that. 'Cause it was a black kid? Is that why? 'Cause a cop didn't shoot him? Is that why? Nobody's angry?"
Hi John, just read your and Jason Stanley's opinion pieces on The Economist - a debate on CRT with Ibram X. Kendi may be out of the question, but what about a debate with Stanley on a forum like Intelligence Square US (or Bloggingheads)?
Did you notice that John wrote a countervailing piece at the Economist just a few days ago. I'd say the stage has been nicely set for the debate you propose.
John, congrats on your success so far and that the next book is on the way. I feel like those that will castigate you are the brainwashed few who engage the most in social media, assuring their grey matter stays nice and clean with all the narratives pushed to them by AI algos.
Those of us that have disengaged from social media and its stupidities are the ones seeking rational discourse, finding it on Substack. We're the ones who want long form, thought provoking, work and we will buy your books readily. We're the ones that will also be in the voting majorities in 2022 and 2024, so keep up your hard work, ignore the chatter from the "engaged" Elect, and be patient for results.
Finding Johns critical analysis of how contemporary antiracist activists segued into a madness of their own making has been the life raft of sanity I've been clinging to since I got lambasted, cancelled and blacklisted for inadvertently revealing myself as a white supremacist racist by defending ppl who describe a certain type of gown as a "kimono". Then I compounded my hideousness by calling the China based fast fashion company that stole and faked 14 of my unique original designs "slitty eyed criminals". In what they no doubt feel is appropriate punishment and education some of the elect campaigned the gallery I exhibit in annually to ban me for those examples of my racism. (I am a textile artist making unique womens art to wear clothing....some items of which I had the temerity to call a kimono). To their credit the gallery board refused to expel me, but when they warned I may face some unpleasant activist protest during the exhibition I decided to cancel myself for this year...
Not saying the proposed punishment fits the crime, but I think people being offended at your description of the people who stole your work as being "slitty eyed" is pretty reasonable...
"reasonable"...? they are Chinese businessmen who don't recognise international copyright laws. They made possibly millions of dollars from robbing my intellectual labour and scammed 100s of 1000s of customers worldwide. My income averages about Aus$30,000 per annum. They also use Uighar forced labour in their factories. I think describing their eyes as slitty is pretty mild compared to the violence they comfortably perpetrate on others in their greed to enrich themselves.
...resorting to being rude, angry and insulting, as I was powerless to stop to the robbery, does not equate to being a racist. And even if I were a racist - so what? I would only be an individual expressing repellant opinions. Stopping people from making a living becos they have offensive opinions is the kind of sinful behaviour that Prof McWhorter recognises as a modern day iteration of the inquistion. Surely the CCP govt which is committing genocide against the Uighar populace are more racist than me?
Everything else you’re saying may be true - and in terms of sense of proportion of moral wrong and harm it most surely is. But insulting people on the basis of immutable, inherited physical characteristics (and characteristics associated with a racialized collection of population groups) is wrong in itself. It also comes across as petty and - more importantly is counterproductive to whatever valid grievances and claims you’re trying to make.
I am not embarrassed to have been "petty" in making an existential shriek of pain. You are correct that in the midst of being mugged I didn’t have the politically correct restraint to respectfully implore the thugs to desist. Were you ever beaten up by bullies then felt ashamed to call them bastards (after all, their parents were married).
I hope you’ll benefit from reading Prof McWhorter because I wonder what you define as racism and the appropriate ways to counter it.
Hounding individuals for wrong thinking/speech to pillory them serves primarily to gratify the selfrighteousness of the elect. The elect as self appointed ratters out of racists (generally white ppl) feel entitled to allocate the punishments that will lead the sinful to right thinking. Coming to right thinking has great resemblance to the Catholic ritual of confession, as it constitutes a public recanting by the sinner on social media wrapped up by a promise to do better and donate to BIPOC charities.
My ancestry is Scots/Welsh so my skin melanin is pale. 130 years ago my ancestors chose to emigrate to New Zealand where English settler colonialists had a better chance at attaining middle class prosperity. They were very unsuccessful racists as they kept marrying the indigenous Maori people and making babies with them. Result being its very difficult to discern how much of the bad white supremacist racist blood still courses around in my veins. However, skin tone passes as white so apparently the DNA must have imparted the ancestral white racist attitudes because I described some Chinese criminals as having slitty eyes.
I have never thought or believed my English ancestry makes me superior to other human beings anywhere on the Earth. Whatever their shade of melanin, hair type, eye colour/shape or culture all people on planet Earth are my equals and same species. On occasion I’ve rudely referred to racial physical characteristics to insult a person I dislike (slitty eyes) but it is wrong to assume that means I believe that person is an inferior variety of human being to myself.
Consider, I have been called a fat bitch because I have unsightly folds of excess adipose tissue draping from my midriff. If fatphobia were a sin to rival the label of racist would that entitle me to justifiably denounce my detractors on social media and set about cancelling, blacklisting and badmouthing them? Not just their attitudes and character but their means of making a living must be annihilated too.
Please note, I haven’t fully outlined the range of social media blacklisting I’ve been subjected to over the last 2 years. Includes such things as my online store being blacklisted and a 40 minute video character assassination published by an antiracist influencer with 250,000 followers on Instagram – I have less than 450.
I understand your "shriek of pain." Most of us are capable of saying intemperate, even hurtful things in a flash of anger. But if we slip up like that, shouldn't we apologize afterwards, and resolve to do better?
"Slitty-eyed criminals" is an awful phrase...and it sounds as if you're standing by it. Do you really not see how different that insult is from calling a bully a bastard, or for gratuitously calling someone fat? If so, it seems that you've failed to take on board what E.W.R. said: "[I]nsulting people on the basis of immutable, inherited physical characteristics (and characteristics associated with a racialized collection of population groups) is wrong in itself."
The Elect are a group I oppose, for reasons that John McWhorter expresses so very well. But your comment about "slitty-eyed criminals" for once put me a lot closer to their camp. It is, without a doubt, a racist and unacceptable term — even if you can't see that. I don't think I've ever been on the side of cancel culture, but yes, I would stop frequenting a store whose owner refers to "slitty-eyed criminals" and who doesn't see why that's offensive and wrong.
My wife and I are white. We have three Asian (adopted) children. If the five of us had you over for dinner, what would tell my kids about your use of "slitty-eyed" as an insult that would make them (or me) want you to stick around for dessert?
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.
PLEASE narrate the audiobook yourself! I just can't imagine hearing a different voice reading it.
Agreed. I'd feel cheated not to hear your voice.
I see you as a liberal, in the classic sense.
I just ordered "Nine Nasty Words", and while I was at it I got '"Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" too. Though I prefer hardcovers, I had to go with paperback for the latter, as hardcover copies started at $120!
You have made a significant contribution to this critical issue. I wish it could be called a conversation but I fear it remains a monologue as the awoke are unwilling and incapable of engaging in dialog. I appreciate your willingness to consider reader input and look forward to a book more appropriate to the crisis at hand. With its flaws, the manuscript was thoroughly “pro-Black.” Congrats on pending publication.
I have pre-ordered it. Looking forward to reading it.
While it is interesting to analyze The Elect as a religion, I find it just as fruitful to frame this in terms of the secular. The Elect don’t actually believe in Original Sin, they believe if two babies were to play together and if one happened to be white, and the other happened to be black, nothing but nice normal healthy baby behavior would take place. Lets just take this for granted, the take away is Racism is learned behavior... and white people are just naturally racist is where the conflation begins. The naturally racist is being mistaken as from conception. Original sin IS from conception, a baby most definitely has original sin if we are using the strictly theological definition of what that phrase means. But provided racism is framed as a learned behavior by The Elect, it can’t be present at conception if it is from something learned as a child. This demonstrates that the Elect believe the problem is society’s corrupting influence ala Jean Jacques Rousseau. White people just happen to be on top of the materialist food chain, and the primal instincts of this dominance drove suppression and oppression naturally out of Marxist determinism. I could go on with critiquing revolutionary ideology, why that is actually anti-theological on a basis of good faith (pardon the pun). I think I’ve made my point.
"if we are using the strictly theological definition of what that phrase means"
So, that's the thing, my brother… I feel quite confident in suggesting that McWhorter is NOT using a strictly theological definition of what that phrase(or any other specific religious reference employed) means. With all due respect, I think you are perhaps getting tangled up in the specifics of the metaphor, and perhaps missing the point. He's not making a metaphysical claim, and to the extent that original sin is employed in the metaphor, there's NOTHING soteriological or eschatological, other than an oblique reference to the fact that even the lowly religious folk offer a path to redemption, something notably absent within the Woke community.
I'm not sure if you've followed the Glenn Show over the past year or so, but McWhorter wrote this book out of disgust towards self-righteous, virtue-signaling phonies who mistake their upper-middle class status and putative education with a legitimate intellectual OR moral superiority. And given their dismissive condescension towards evangelicals, nothing serves as a better polemical comparison than to illustrate the manner in which they embody an anti-socratic, anti-intellectual, and morally confused psychology that not only RESEMBLES that of the tent-revival, flat-earther creationists, but they actually reveal themselves to be identical to those for whom they hold so much contempt.
I strongly disagree. They might claim that they don’t believe in original sin as in literally hating and blaming a baby for being born white, when they’re called on it, because they know how ugly and crazy and alienating it can sound. But in self-serving, slippery, motte and bailey fashion, many actually do believe in it and will revert to that kind of maximalist claim and condemnation as often and as far as they can get away with it. They literally believe in intergenerational collective guilt. Lying, toxic Queen Three Names at the NYT, for example, has often openly gloated that one of her goals has been to directly condemn, inflict suffering and guilt, and extract and extort payback from all white people today - simply as a condition of their skin color, based solely on the misdeeds of entirely unrelated, historically distant people whose only connection to them is a somewhat similar skin pigmentation. To her and many of her ilk, their guilt is in St. Kendi’s phrase “stamped on the skin”. It’s remarkable by the way how plainly many of these neoracist “antiracist” types giddily seek to inflict what they claim to abhor; how much their game is about racist hatred and revenge. It’s not just the discrimination today in response to past discrimination; discrimination tomorrow (and you can bet forever) in response to any hint of discrimination they imagine, assert, or invent today or after. White skin itself is sufficient grounds to cast blame and retaliate. On what other grounds would they abuse little kids, as young as they can get at them - in preschool and kindergarten and via all media, by making them feel lesser, feel guilty, cause them to hate themselves and turn them against their parents, solely on the basis of their skin color? They aren’t just calling the parents in and browbeating them. They are - and I use these words very advisedly - literally abusing very young children and seeking to destroy their familial bonds out of an ideology of inherent racial guilt, blame, and hatred.
Lets say I agree with everything you just said as a matter of fact. The question is does this make them believers in original sin. The Catholic church abuses children, but not because they believe in original sin. Even though they do believe in it strictly speaking. This is the problem I have with analyzing this as a religion, it misses so much of why this is wrong in a chance to make some cheap shot equivalence in an attempt to sound like a third rate Christopher Hitchens that misses The Elect’s own special brand of terrible human being. I wouldn’t call them The Elect, I would call them communists, but that’s just me. If there is a religion to blame it’s old fashioned Christianity. Except Civil Rights was more effective and more fair when religious leaders where at the forefront, at least in the United States.
Congratulations! Looking forward to it!
Just got cancelled from my Black Lives Book Club for saying that the 74 million people who voted for Trump are not all racists and may have good faith reasons to vote Republican. The club is entirely white, except for my decades long black friend who leads the meetings (and has disowned me, a Democrat). For my transgression he told me (with anger) that I supported the caste system and white supremacy. It’s noteworthy that he is famously known among his friends for his calm demeanor and decency to other people. Woke Racism is spot on. And only a religion could so corrupt such a kind and decent person. Kendi and DiAngelo are the guiding lights of the club.
one especially good reason NOT to vote for republicans is that 70% of that 74 million people believe the election was stolen. and 99% of congressmen and senators know it wasn't stolen but are maintaining the big lie out of political expedience. dishonesty, irrationality, and a lack of ethics is not going to make us great again. I'll stay an independent, thank you very much
Josh, I suspect your percentages are not accurate, as your post sounds like a political opinion. Lee is saying that he got cancelled for telling the truth, ie that Republicans have no more racists in their ranks than Democrats (the unions had many members who could not bring themselves to vote for Obama) and that voting Republican was as much a vote against Hillary as a vote for Trump. Twisting that opinion into a support for white supremacy and a "caste" system shows a derangement of reasoning.
Josh I don't think Lee is insinuating that people should vote Republican, just that instead of demonizing absolutely everyone who voted Republican we should try to understand what reasons one might have for voting Republican so we can try to pull those people away from the party. Admittedly the Republican Party's base includes a great many people who are virulently racist and bigoted, many of them irredeemabley so. But to chalk them all up as being iredeemable bigots is both highly reductive, and politically defeatist in nature.
I think the new title is right on the mark. Do you hear the sense of betrayal in the plea of Sherrie Jennings? She's the Minneapolis grandmother of a ten-year-old boy who had been gravely injured in a drive-by shooting.( https://youtu.be/p7qbpJqQpgg?t=195 ). "Why is this community not angry?" she asks a news conference where city leaders unveiled a community policing plan. "You all tell me that. 'Cause it was a black kid? Is that why? 'Cause a cop didn't shoot him? Is that why? Nobody's angry?"
This is great news. Can the book be pre-ordered somewhere?
The link in the post will take you to the official Penguin page that has links to all of the places you can pre-order. I just pre-ordered from Amazon.
Hi John, just read your and Jason Stanley's opinion pieces on The Economist - a debate on CRT with Ibram X. Kendi may be out of the question, but what about a debate with Stanley on a forum like Intelligence Square US (or Bloggingheads)?
Did you notice that John wrote a countervailing piece at the Economist just a few days ago. I'd say the stage has been nicely set for the debate you propose.
John, I cannot wait to but this book - it will be an essential contribution to our nations conversation around race-as we say in Spanish,”P’alante”
John, congrats on your success so far and that the next book is on the way. I feel like those that will castigate you are the brainwashed few who engage the most in social media, assuring their grey matter stays nice and clean with all the narratives pushed to them by AI algos.
Those of us that have disengaged from social media and its stupidities are the ones seeking rational discourse, finding it on Substack. We're the ones who want long form, thought provoking, work and we will buy your books readily. We're the ones that will also be in the voting majorities in 2022 and 2024, so keep up your hard work, ignore the chatter from the "engaged" Elect, and be patient for results.
I'll definitely be buying it.
Finding Johns critical analysis of how contemporary antiracist activists segued into a madness of their own making has been the life raft of sanity I've been clinging to since I got lambasted, cancelled and blacklisted for inadvertently revealing myself as a white supremacist racist by defending ppl who describe a certain type of gown as a "kimono". Then I compounded my hideousness by calling the China based fast fashion company that stole and faked 14 of my unique original designs "slitty eyed criminals". In what they no doubt feel is appropriate punishment and education some of the elect campaigned the gallery I exhibit in annually to ban me for those examples of my racism. (I am a textile artist making unique womens art to wear clothing....some items of which I had the temerity to call a kimono). To their credit the gallery board refused to expel me, but when they warned I may face some unpleasant activist protest during the exhibition I decided to cancel myself for this year...
Not saying the proposed punishment fits the crime, but I think people being offended at your description of the people who stole your work as being "slitty eyed" is pretty reasonable...
"reasonable"...? they are Chinese businessmen who don't recognise international copyright laws. They made possibly millions of dollars from robbing my intellectual labour and scammed 100s of 1000s of customers worldwide. My income averages about Aus$30,000 per annum. They also use Uighar forced labour in their factories. I think describing their eyes as slitty is pretty mild compared to the violence they comfortably perpetrate on others in their greed to enrich themselves.
...resorting to being rude, angry and insulting, as I was powerless to stop to the robbery, does not equate to being a racist. And even if I were a racist - so what? I would only be an individual expressing repellant opinions. Stopping people from making a living becos they have offensive opinions is the kind of sinful behaviour that Prof McWhorter recognises as a modern day iteration of the inquistion. Surely the CCP govt which is committing genocide against the Uighar populace are more racist than me?
Everything else you’re saying may be true - and in terms of sense of proportion of moral wrong and harm it most surely is. But insulting people on the basis of immutable, inherited physical characteristics (and characteristics associated with a racialized collection of population groups) is wrong in itself. It also comes across as petty and - more importantly is counterproductive to whatever valid grievances and claims you’re trying to make.
I am not embarrassed to have been "petty" in making an existential shriek of pain. You are correct that in the midst of being mugged I didn’t have the politically correct restraint to respectfully implore the thugs to desist. Were you ever beaten up by bullies then felt ashamed to call them bastards (after all, their parents were married).
I hope you’ll benefit from reading Prof McWhorter because I wonder what you define as racism and the appropriate ways to counter it.
Hounding individuals for wrong thinking/speech to pillory them serves primarily to gratify the selfrighteousness of the elect. The elect as self appointed ratters out of racists (generally white ppl) feel entitled to allocate the punishments that will lead the sinful to right thinking. Coming to right thinking has great resemblance to the Catholic ritual of confession, as it constitutes a public recanting by the sinner on social media wrapped up by a promise to do better and donate to BIPOC charities.
My ancestry is Scots/Welsh so my skin melanin is pale. 130 years ago my ancestors chose to emigrate to New Zealand where English settler colonialists had a better chance at attaining middle class prosperity. They were very unsuccessful racists as they kept marrying the indigenous Maori people and making babies with them. Result being its very difficult to discern how much of the bad white supremacist racist blood still courses around in my veins. However, skin tone passes as white so apparently the DNA must have imparted the ancestral white racist attitudes because I described some Chinese criminals as having slitty eyes.
I have never thought or believed my English ancestry makes me superior to other human beings anywhere on the Earth. Whatever their shade of melanin, hair type, eye colour/shape or culture all people on planet Earth are my equals and same species. On occasion I’ve rudely referred to racial physical characteristics to insult a person I dislike (slitty eyes) but it is wrong to assume that means I believe that person is an inferior variety of human being to myself.
Consider, I have been called a fat bitch because I have unsightly folds of excess adipose tissue draping from my midriff. If fatphobia were a sin to rival the label of racist would that entitle me to justifiably denounce my detractors on social media and set about cancelling, blacklisting and badmouthing them? Not just their attitudes and character but their means of making a living must be annihilated too.
Please note, I haven’t fully outlined the range of social media blacklisting I’ve been subjected to over the last 2 years. Includes such things as my online store being blacklisted and a 40 minute video character assassination published by an antiracist influencer with 250,000 followers on Instagram – I have less than 450.
I understand your "shriek of pain." Most of us are capable of saying intemperate, even hurtful things in a flash of anger. But if we slip up like that, shouldn't we apologize afterwards, and resolve to do better?
"Slitty-eyed criminals" is an awful phrase...and it sounds as if you're standing by it. Do you really not see how different that insult is from calling a bully a bastard, or for gratuitously calling someone fat? If so, it seems that you've failed to take on board what E.W.R. said: "[I]nsulting people on the basis of immutable, inherited physical characteristics (and characteristics associated with a racialized collection of population groups) is wrong in itself."
The Elect are a group I oppose, for reasons that John McWhorter expresses so very well. But your comment about "slitty-eyed criminals" for once put me a lot closer to their camp. It is, without a doubt, a racist and unacceptable term — even if you can't see that. I don't think I've ever been on the side of cancel culture, but yes, I would stop frequenting a store whose owner refers to "slitty-eyed criminals" and who doesn't see why that's offensive and wrong.
My wife and I are white. We have three Asian (adopted) children. If the five of us had you over for dinner, what would tell my kids about your use of "slitty-eyed" as an insult that would make them (or me) want you to stick around for dessert?
Thanks for considering.