It seems to me that either one believes a whole swath of humanity is, individually and in the aggregate, inferior to another whole swath of humanity, or one doesn’t.
The former position is racist. The latter position is not racist.
In the former case, one goes mad with self-contradictions as one tries to claim, for example, that Swath J is both subhuman and controlling the universe. In the latter case, one takes individuals as one finds them in the course of one’s personal life.
It is like “the salesclerk conundrum.”
A black comes into a store.
If the clerk immediately assists him/her it is to keep a close eye to ensure no theft and to get him/her out of the store ASAP.
If the clerk waits to assist him/her the clerk is shunning the black until absolutely necessary.
You cannot win.
This is an excellent article and a good “immunization” against the offensive nonsense in that book. Hope your employer doesn’t require it...companies are falling all over themselves now to prove how “woke” they are. What a world.
And "White Silence = Violence."
Dr. McWhorter is right: it's a religious cult.
Also, everyone should read his books and listen to his linguistics lectures, which are full of cheerful facts.
Racism is racist. Cancel racism.
Pssst, I need to whisper this as otherwise the Mob may attack. Rumor is that John McWhorter is melanin positive!
My company is run by a bunch of politically very incorrect Cajuns. We won’t be reading that book at work.
My parents taught me to never be prejudiced against black people. I never interacted with black people until high school, and I learned my attitudes toward them there.
We had three — count them three — black students who buckled down and studied. They socialized with their white classmates. They were shunned by the rest of the black students.
And what about those students? The majority faded into the background with the majority of the white students — there but not standing out in any way.
The worst of them traveleled in groups and caused trouble wherever they went with loud-mouthed insults, threats, and physical attacks toward whites.
So I learned that black people are like anyone else, but that a white person can be targeted by them just for being white.
All the black people I interact with are fine people. But there are black people I avoid, just as there are white people I avoid. It all comes down to class, and that has its roots in parental upbringing and putting the effort into getting a good education. And those are issues that the black community need to address themselves.
Whites are fragile? Whites are the only race that can be attacked by name, demonized because of their success, routinely called racist, accused of oppressing other groups and openly told that they should be exterminated.
Superb article. Thanks for posting.
Like this ..
He has destroyed the book written by the self-loathing racist.
Notice how the Atlantic has adopted a racist style: White is in lower case, but black is upper cased. I don’t know if the author uses this style, but the mag rag would have imposed it on him no matter what. Many leftist newspapers have adopted that style and thus have turned themselves into proponents of hate.
One of the reasons for that is that people with white skin tend to see themselves not so much as a race, but as a variety of ethnic minority subgroups within the American melting pot. Until several generations have passed between the original immigrant and his or her descendants, many, if not most, families inquire about the ethnic origins of the person their children intend to date or marry. The reasons are not about race, but about cultural compatibility with religion, customs and food.
Blacks from many tribes and languages have been perceived as one “race” by skin color when transplanted into a European-originated country; and they quite naturally see whites in the same generalized way; but there is actually great variety in both groups.
Likewise, there is a wide range of racial attitudes in both groups.
Commies like to lump many disparate small units into a fwe large ones to manipulate political power.
Save the link and a print out of this article; and for good measure, a picture of John McWhorter.
Ive been reading McWhorter since he first started publishing for general audiences in the 90s. He makes well-reasoned arguments. As a linguist, and while not a conservative per se, he truly believes that words have meaning, and does not put up with the flimsy emotional argumentation of the left.