Professor John McWhorter: Jussie Smollett Exemplifies Victimhood Culture (Excellent)

breitbart ^ | Tom Ciccotta

[RoosterRedux]

Professor John McWhorter of Columbia University appeared on Don Lemon’s CNN show to talk about Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax, claiming that Smollett saw the hate hoax as a path to greater fame than his acting alone could achieve.

Appearing on the program to speak about a column he wrote for The Atlantic, Columbia University Professor John McWhorter explained the motivations behind Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax.

McWhorter makes the case that Smollett took cues from the lessons learned from the Covington incident. Primarily, Smollett realized that America is quick to side with alleged victims, even with the facts don’t support the narrative. Moreover, Smollett realized the virtue of being a victim in the social justice age.

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The video at source gives the absolute best, most intelligent critic of what Jussie Smollett was doing that I have heard.

I have taken the liberty of inserting a cleaned up excerpt from the transcript of the video here below. Keep in mind that this is a Black Columbia Univ. professor speaking.

There's something that we've all missed where he's [Jussie Smollett] getting this. There’s this idea that there's a larger narrative that we're supposed to keep in mind even in the place of facts.

Take Mike Brown [in Ferguson, MO] for example. It’s tragic that he died but there is still an idea that Mike Brown died with his hands up.

Now the facts have made it quite plain that that's not what happened.

There is nothing beyond any shadow of a doubt that that's not how that boy died. But there's a certain sense that we're supposed to believe it on some larger level.

I've heard ordinary people talking about it…and I’ve certainly read esteemed intellectuals writing about that as if that somehow happened.

Jussie Smollett has grown up in that kind of environment where he watches the facts being skirted in that way where, say, a Rachel Dolezal who's a white woman who walks around spray-tan pretending that she's black but never says “ok it was all just a big hoax and now I'm going to be white because that's who I am.”

Instead, she [Rachel Dolezal] kind of smirks to the cameras and kind of walks off into the sunset.

Jesse Smollett has come of age within that so as far as he's concerned his relationship to THE FACTS is about as oblique as those of Rachel Dolezal.

Jussie is clearly an extreme personality with a certain extreme self-regard which you can smell from his Twitter feed. From an interview I read with him about three years ago, I had the guiltiest feeling. I'm not talking about the past few weeks, but three years ago.

I read a very nice interview with him where I thought and I hated myself for thinking it [because I couldn't think of anything that was wrong with him] BUT I thought there's something smug about him. It's like he wants to be a civil rights hero of the past and he's a little uncomfortable that circumstances today don't quite allow it.

I swear I thought that and I would never have written it and I just went on with my life but I thought that's something about that guy and look how what has turned out.

I just have to ask you this: what does it say about race issues as a whole in this country when someone can be acting oppression rather than [actually] suffering from oppression.

You know that things have gotten better when somebody can actually feel comfortable pretending to be oppressed rather than really being oppressed.

If it really was 1960, except the window dressing had changed, there could not be a Rachel Dolezal and there could never be a serious-minded performing person like Jessie Smollett who pulls something like this and comes out of it thinking that he's been wronged.

We're doing better than we think.

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Here's the video at youtube...

John McWhorter Sums Up the Jussie Smollett Case

Comments at youtube are well worth reading.

[billorites]

Read McWorter's article What the Jussie Smollett Story Reveals in The Atlantic.

[Pollster1]

Take Mike Brown [in Ferguson, MO] . . . that's not how that boy died.

He could get in big trouble with the arbiters of political correctness for referring to a black man as "boy". I'm glad a few people are still left who are not intimidated by the swarm of petty tyrants.

[goodnesswins]

Bookmarked...hope McWhorter has protection

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He’s a Black professor...and he is absolutely brilliant in his summary of the Jussie Smollett hoax.

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Thx for that Bill. This professor is a real winner.

[Liz]

An ego-driven actor, Smollett craves attention, He invents a world full of "microaggressions and institutional racism"
that feed his malignant narcissism. In Smollett's bizarro world of entertainment, CGI creates impossible activist heroes.
Fighting off an invisible bigotry, creating a hate crime was his way to emulate these faked-up heroes.

Smollet was a picture-perfect, fighting mad victim as he spoke to an unblinking Robin Roberts on ABC's GMA.

Smollett reinvented himself as an especially fierce kind of victim...a cool hero. “I fought the f**k back,” he told fellow-believer Roberts.

The self-important Smollett was weaned at the breast of radical black activism. His mother (Maxine Waters says she's
her friend) associated with the Black Panthers and Black radical Angela Davis. Smollett has identified proudly
with the radical black activist tradition. What better way to promote himself?

[ek_hornbeck]

John McWhorter is a rare example of a liberal who with some amount of intellectual honesty and integrity. I disagree with him on most issues, but unlike most of his fellow liberals, he doesn’t think that he needs to tell blatant lies to make his points or advance his agenda.

[goodnesswins]

Interesting...I went and skimmed this and another article of McWhorter’s

at Atlantic...he seems to be a believer in Blasey Ford...and a derider of President Trump...but looks like he’s an intellectual on Racism.

[gloryblaze]

Except at 5:08 I think he is saying that Trump has the same sick personality as Smollett...

[I want the USA back]

OK,John McWhorter, I just took you off my $h!t list.

[ridesthemiles]

Jussie

Robin

Both are black

Both are living a life that includes a partner of the same gender. Homosexual to the core.

NO BIAS?

Please. Roberts owes GMA viewers an apology.

[griswold3]

Excellent.
Very astute observations by McWhorter.

[aquila48]

“If it really was 1960, except the window dressing had changed, there could not be a Rachel Dolezal and there could never be a serious-minded performing person like Jessie Smollett who pulls something like this and comes out of it thinking that he’s been wronged.

We’re doing better than we think.”

So, he’s saying that back in 1960 Dolezal and Smollett would have never gotten away with their scams, maybe not even contemplated them, but we’re doing better today?? Is this guy nuts?

We’re not doing better, we’ve become a sick society.

[RoosterRedux]

So, he’s saying that back in 1960 Dolezal and Smollett would have never gotten away with their scams, maybe not even contemplated them, but we’re doing better today?

That's not what he saying.

Think about it a wee bit more and you'll see what he means.

It is possible that it makes more sense hearing it on tape than reading it in print.

[aquila48]

That’s what I read.

You couldn’t have gotten away with this type of crap in 1960,now you can to some extent and that’s an improvement?

What’s your interpretation?

[x]

I suspect he's saying that now people are pretending to oppressed and back then they really were.

That sounds like an improvement to me.

[RoosterRedux]

It sounded to me (when I first heard it in the video) that McWhorter was saying that, in the 1960's, there was no need to fake it with hoaxes because it was really happening.

The fact that it has to be faked/hoaxed now instead of really happening is the improvement.

[Sergio]

Fake hate crime bookmark.