More on White Fragility
This article by John McWhorter is highly recommended.
You might want to send it to anyone who’s on your case to “do the work” outlined in the book.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
This article by John McWhorter is highly recommended.
You might want to send it to anyone who’s on your case to “do the work” outlined in the book.
It is, indeed, a “prayer book for what can only be described as a cult.” McWhorter is certainly correct in alluding to the widespread “disparity fallacy”, which holds that any statistical difference between blacks (as a group) and whites (as a group) can only be the result of the malevolence of whites, either in the past (the “legacy of slavery”) or in the present (“systemic or structural or institutional racism”). Aside from the obvious philosophical problem of agency (which apparently exists for some, but not for all), it is a dogma which mandates all possible solutions to black problems as necessarily imposed from without rather than generated from within.
Expanding on what je just wrote. This whole movement is so overtly a substitute religion for these people. D’angelo is a wild eyed evangelist for this cult. It even has original sin that we all must acknowledge to be saved from. She would fit in well with the Inquisition.
“…teaches them how to be racist in a whole new way.”
With respect to Dr. McWhorter, is there really anything new about it? The “White Man’s Burden” has been a recognized trope for at least 75 years. The “Magic Negro” in film for at least 20. “Othering” African-Americans in order to “save” them has been going on for literally my entire 55 years and more.
Hmm. That said, perhaps what Dr. McWhorter is seeing as novel is the more explicit strain of Calvinism in the modern approach—that the fight for civil rights circa 1964 was deemed by those in the fight as possible to win, whereas the modern version really does posit, literally, a metaphysics without possibility of atonement or redemption. And if we’re going to look at this through even this much of a Christian lens, we must call “a metaphysics without possibility of atonement or redemption” what it is:
Antichrist.
I get the slapping down of white fragility. But how much of it is because of who she is? Are her theories really that much different than Coates?
“You might want to send it to anyone who’s on your case to “do the work” outlined in the book.”
Funny, I just came here from reading it, and forwarding it to my friends list.
1. The book is incoherent and a fairly transparent exercise in gamesmanship.
2. This woman has a tenured faculty position, even though she knows squat about social relations and squat about teaching methods. That tells you something about the ‘graduate program’ that accepted her dissertation, the department that hired her and recommended her for tenure, and the college provost who granted her tenure.
3. It also tells you something about each and every institution that granted her a speaking fee and each and every HR department that hired her as a consultant.
Idiocracy is Now.
That article is terrible.
McWhorter and DiAngelo are on the same page; only their tactics diverge. I reject that page as an intellectual perversion, and the premises of both the book and the article as bizarre and noxious.
McWhorter is probably right that DiAngelo’s thesis belittles blacks. I think it belittles everybody.
That said, perhaps what Dr. McWhorter is seeing as novel is the more explicit strain of Calvinism in the modern approach—t
What, you fancy diAngelo believes in TULIP?
There’s someone in every thread who can’t discuss a cultural problem without sticking Puritan Massachusetts with the bill.
tom swift:
I disagree, because I’m familiar with a lot of McWhorter’s work. He is an interesting hybrid, but he is not on the same page as DiAngelo, not by a longshot.
He occupies a sort of middle ground in which he often makes very intelligent commentary, but at the same time he is still somewhat liberal in his politics. He has been saying for at least a year or two that the anti-racism movement is a cult and/or a religion, and that’s it’s destructive to everyone.
He also is not a Black Lives Matter fan.
Where I think he errs is that he believes DiAngelo means well. I don’t think so. I think she’s on a big power trip (she also makes scads of money, but that bothers me less). Whether or not she believes her own theory I’m not sure, but she resembles a cult leader more than anything else and is a very scary figure.
I think what she is doing is hurting everyone in immeasurable ways. But if people weren’t weak enough to listen to her horse manure, she would have no power. The sad thing is that people buy what she’s selling.
I found this item more unbelievable:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/national-museum-african-american-history-culture-promotes-racist-anti-american-communist-propaganda/
You can go to the Gateway link without “ad permission”, but the original article is at The Atlantic which may have requirements. The Gateway link should give you enough to be shocked, aggravated, offended…provide your own adjective.
The most fundamental identity truth is “I am not my body.”
So ends the astonishingly superficial saga of racial identity.
This at the end, “But if you are white, make no mistake: You will never succeed in the “work” she demands of you. It is lifelong, and you will die a racist just as you will die a sinner.” is brilliant.
SueK,
There is a post here, further down the page, on that very topic.
I don’t necessarily share all of John McWhorter’s politics, but I respect him as a scholar and public intellectual. I have never seen him shy away from speaking his mind, no matter how unpopular, and he often stands up (as in this case) when he could easily take it easy. Based on the many times I have heard him speak he is worthy of admiration. If 30% of our Professors had John McWhorter’s ethics we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Banned Lizard,
Aside from questions of pure, physical attraction*, it is depressing how many people judge others on immutable characteristics. Height, hair color, skin color, eye color… what does any of that have to do with anything? Not a one of us has any control over any of it (well, maybe hair color).
In the musical, “South Pacific” there is a song about racism, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” As brilliant as Rogers and Hammerstein were, I think they got that backwards. Those who judge by immutable characteristics are infantile and uncivilized.
*Many people have “a type” when it comes to affaires de coeur.
McWhorter states, “She operates from the now-familiar concern with white privilege, aware (imagined) of the unintentional racism ever lurking inside of her that was inculcated from birth by the white supremacy on which America was founded. To atone for this original sin, she is devoted to endlessly exploring, acknowledging, and seeking to undo whites’ “complicity with and investment in” racism.” my emphasis
“This whole movement is so overtly a substitute religion for these people. D’angelo is a wild eyed evangelist for this cult. It even has original sin that we all must acknowledge to be saved from.” physicsguy
That dogma specifies that only whites suffer from this “original sin” but acknowledgement will not save whites. McWhorter sees this: “if you are white, make no mistake: You will never succeed in the “work” she demands of you. It is lifelong, and you will die a racist just as you will die a sinner.”
That is because the goal is not atonement in life, atonement for whites can ONLY be achieved by cultural and racial suicide.
Again, for leftist activists it’s not about racism. It’s about the seizure of power, pure and simple.
Here is another antidote to the White Privilege Myth.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-15-a-potential-successor-to-thomas-sowell
SueK’s link includes the Poster Defining White Supremacy that Neo discussed earlier today.
After looking at Arora’s list of minority groups with median household income greater than white people (predominant European ancestry, and Hispanics when it suits the Left or the government to classify them as white), I can’t believe that any of them reached that affluence level by eschewing the Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture.
I guess the Ghanaians are White now, and the Nigerians all made their money in email scams.
Rufus,
Thank you…I missed that! I usually check the page early …but today I didn’t. I guess that’ll teach me!!!
Still…it’s so outrageous … it bears repeating!!
I liked, “DiAngelo has spent a very long time conducting diversity seminars in which whites, exposed to her catechism, regularly tell her—many while crying, yelling, or storming toward the exit—that she’s insulting them and being reductionist. Yet none of this seems to have led her to look inward.” Right??? But if she’s really the equivalent of a cult leader, she won’t. Any criticism or negative reaction to her is just further proof that she’s right.
” … it bears repeating!!” You can say that again!
“Any criticism or negative reaction to her is just further proof that she’s right.” – shadow
Well, that fits with a common conservative maxim: “If you’re taking flak, you’re over the target.”
But that just means you are asserting controversial positions and some people vehemently disagree with you.
You can also catch flak because you are flat-out wrong.
Rav Arora’s essay is worth reading in full.
I expect him to get cancelled for something by the end of the week.
https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/the-fallacy-of-white-privilege-and-how-its-corroding-society/
Anyone else getting exhausted by all this emphasis on race?
Whatever happened to the content of one’s character as opposed to the color of one’s skin?
Diversity (i.e. denial of individual dignity, denial of individual conscience, affirmative discrimination, color quotas, color blocs) breeds adversity.
Is it possible to cancel Matt Taibbi?
I missed this post of his on Independence Day, but the man is starting to sound like a Deplorable!
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/year-zero
He doesn’t seem very fragile to me.
“To atone for this original sin…”
…she promotes Black Supremacy.
Well, we all need a little balance in our lives.
(Makes sense to me….)
File under: “It takes an ‘intellectual’…”
I stopped at the sentence: “Her assumption that all people have a racist bias is reasonable—science has demonstrated it.”
This use of “science”, without any explanation or reference, is appalling. Quantum mechanics is more humble in its assertions verified with astonishing precision than the theories advanced by these modern shamans.
And if racist bias is present in all people it’s certainly present in black ones – but no such elementary inference is considered.
For all those whites who believe the benefit from white privilege, I suggest they put their money where their mouth is and do the following:
1. As an act of contrition, they should provide cash payments – reparations – to blacks.
2. They should immediately give up their kid’s place in college and give it to a black student.
3. If they have more than one home – say a vacation home; they should immediately give it to a poor black family.
4. If they have more than one car, they should give the other cars to a black person.
5. They should immediately move into an inner city black area – preferably into a low income housing project – to demonstrate their support of and their solidarity with black americans. The home they depart from should be given, gratis, to a black family.
6. They should immediately send their kids off to inner city public schools; in this way the white kids can be purged of any white privilege thoughts.
Those whites following the above 6 recommendations will begin to, but not extinguish, their white privilege.
When will their white privilege be totally “cured?”
Oh, that’s right, NEVER !!
As for those white greedy racist ingrates who do not buy into the white guilt dogma, I suggest they too pay reparations to blacks in the form of a fully paid for, one way airline ticket to any destination chosen by the reparations-seeking recipients.
This should be most agreeable to blacks who wish to leave the racist, evil USA.
I suspect that 99% of BLM members will jump at this opportunity to say adios MF’er to the racist, evil USA.
The only proviso’s for this free ticket – aside from having to be a reparations seeking black American – is that they will immediately lose – FOREVER – their USA citizenship, and they can NEVER, EVER return to the USA.
By the way, Asian-Americans are at the top of the socio-economic ladder here in the USA.
I await a description of what sort of privilege they must possess.
Paolo,
There are many, many black racists here in the U.S.A. Our present situation cries out for a black leader to call this out and encourage self examination. Of course, there are also many, many black non-racists, but in the ’70s and ’80s the white community went through a huge (and beneficial) cultural shift regarding tribalism and intolerance. My generation and those younger are so different from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations in that regard.
The same is necessary in other “marginal” communities, like the LGBTQ alphabet soup. There is much tolerance of intolerance in those communities.
And there are some great voices in all these communities speaking out for freedom and tolerance. I hope and pray some of them will get traction and we will see a movement to fix these issues.
There are many blacks who resent “white” people speaking on their behalf and trying to “save” them from other white people, and I think their numbers are growing. Solutions have to come from within and for decades now there has been far too much tolerance in the black community of truly evil people using divisiveness to promote systems that bring power to an elite few at the overall detriment of many in the black community.
There are many, many black racists here in the U.S.A. Our present situation cries out for a black leader to call this out and encourage self examination. Of course, there are also many, many black non-racists,
From your mouth to God’s ears. Among politicians, Anthony Williams and Robert Bowser had real accomplishments. Neither is particularly honored in the black population. You’ve had some independent thinkers in legislative bodies – Parren Mitchell, Barbara Jordan, Floyd Flake, JC Watts. You’ve had some public intellectuals who have constructive ideas or critiques (Bayard Rustin, Thomas Sowell, Wm. Julius Wilson, Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter). It’s a mild counter-current to the usual shizz.
but in the ’70s and ’80s the white community went through a huge (and beneficial) cultural shift regarding tribalism and intolerance. My generation and those younger are so different from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations in that regard.
You’re about three decades off.
My generation and those younger are so different from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations in that regard.
Really?
My own mother and father (who were at the midpoint of their lives around about 1962) were perfectly ordinary in their social circle. Race wasn’t a topic taking up much space in their heads. Neither had any effective hostility to any liberal mascot group. (My father found male homosexuals silly and alienating, which is what you’d expect from a normal adult male; it had no practical effect on anyone). Both of them were very skeptical of different aspects of grievance culture (especially the explosion of personal injury suits during the 1970s). Both of them were realistic about life in the slums and in the schools serving the slums. My grandparents (who saw the midpoint of their lives around about 1933) broke down three ways: two had no significant opinions on race matters that anyone cared to recall (unsurprising for people living in a small town in Upstate New York); one was a phlegmatic paternalist, and regarded cordial patron-client relationships as the proper mode of race relations; and one was the grandson of a pair of Confederate veterans whose parents did not volunteer that their families had been slaveholders, who disliked the seamier side of Southern living (mob violence, &c), and who was irritated about various features of black American life (“the goddamn nigrahs, they don’t know what they want”).
Blacks in this country were not (ca 1950) being held back by the attitudes of people like my parents and grandparents.
Art Deco,
I was referring to the culture. Almost every cartoon, public service announcement, teen magazine, “a very special episode of…” on every sitcom, music, superheros … My generation was raised to have a knee jerk repulsion of anything that remotely resembled looking down on the African American community. It’s a bit like the scene in “A Clockwork Orange.” Anywhere our eyes were open there was a message about how white racism hurts blacks. Think about white sit-com characters vs. black sitcom characters. The Huxtables vs. the Keatons.
You can’t just yap about race being only a social construct and then five years later claim that race is the be-all and end-all…without having your audience think you are nuts.
If they want to do this, then they can’t be so shallow. They must deal with the genetics of melanin in various people’s and language structures, linguistics in evolution, and the history of slavery in all groups, including the whites (within the janissaries, for example) and the black slaves held by the American Indians during the Civil War, et al.
I was referring to the culture. Almost every cartoon, public service announcement, teen magazine, “a very special episode of…” on every sitcom, music, superheros
I don’t think you’re going to find much mass entertainment current during my parents’ formative years which promoted the idea you should despise blacks. There are Bugs Bunny cartoons which bother woke-tards, like this one, which presents a pickaninny version of Elmer Fudd (https://www.npr.org/sections/newsandviews/2008/04/bloggers_roundtable_racist_car.html). Well, some people lack humor. Pity they’re so influential. Now, you want something that actually will lower people’s opinions of blacks, read some 2 Live Crew lyrics (which weren’t written to entertain my grandparents).
The best take on racial relations I read recently:
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2020-06-12.html#03
Rufus T. Firefly:
“In the musical, ‘South Pacific’ there is a song about racism, ‘You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.’ As brilliant as Rogers and Hammerstein were, I think they got that backwards.”
I think they got it backwards because I’ve thought that humans are hardwired to be suspicicious/fearful of the “other”. In human history, just imagine the earliest formation of tribal groups. It would serve your survival probability to be wary of the stranger tribe coming over the hill—people who looked different, behaved differently, spoke in a way you couldn’t understand, wore unrecognizable animal skins, maybe carried intimidating weapons. You’d need to be prepared, on guard, ready to react as needed. Over the millennia, we’ve learned to moderate that tendency, also for survival reasons, and we’ve made some progress. We’re still working on it.
This is just guesswork on my part, but it seems reasonable to me. We have to be taught how to overcome the hardwiring in a reasonable way.
I hate the word “racism”, by the way. In my youth we said “prejudice”, which seems more descriptive. “Racism” feels like an attack, it’s toxic. It’s silly—not to mention hostile—to call someone a racist who may have a prejudice based simply on innocent ignorance.
JanMN: I also hate the word “racism” because it now means nothing and can mean anything, so I prefer the word “xenophobia” as more precise and less abused. And you are completely right, xenophobia is a natural instinct resulting from millennia of human evolution history, so it can not be ever eradicated, only restrained somewhat.
Whatever happened to the content of one’s character as opposed to the color of one’s skin?
It was a rhetorical thrust. The last notable in Democratic circles who adhered to it was Ed Koch. He had a story in one of his memoirs about running into Joseph Rauh at a Georgetown cocktail party around about 1971. When Koch addressed with him the issue of ending racial preference schemes, Rauh supposedly gave an oration (“It was Churcillian” – ‘we will fight you in the streets, we will fight you in the cities’). I suspect for Rauh (and some others), it was always a stalking horse.
I think the emotionally overwrought and historically dubious TV series “Roots” damaged my generation. We all assumed we were evil people because “slavery” was by white people.Having grown up, I don’t feel one bit of guilt over this because my family wasn’t even in this country at the time. The truth about slavery is never discussed.White people were slaves through out the world and frankly Africa came late to the party.
I have experienced so much discrimination from Black people in Detroit I have nothing to “work” through.
It is getting so absurd, it feels like any minute now, the left is going to demand that slavery is a civil right.
I’m cynical enough about these things to believe they are written to sell, to make money, not because the author actually believes the crud they publish.
I found McWhorter annoying during the Obama years, but you go to war with the black linguist academics you have, not the black linguist academics you might want or wish to have at a later time.*
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*You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
–Donald Rumsfeld
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McWhorter’s “Story of Human Language” from The Great Courses is quite good.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html
Also McWhorter’s book, “Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care” (2003).
He made a great presentation about the distinction between formal and informal language and how it collapsed during/after the 60s. I was on the side of that collapse, but now I wish it were otherwise.
Actually, I’m not sure about that because formal language was so often such a crock. Maybe I’m wishing people were more honest and human.
Fat chance!
Who is this Robin chick?
I can find very little about her from before she complete her Ph.D.
She was 48 when she was granted her PhD. (On “multicultural education.” Snort.)
The average time to complete a PhD in the humanities is about ten years. So what was she doing before she was 38?
Where did she get her undergraduate degree? In what? What did she do in those twenty years between graduation from high school and possibly starting her doctoral program?
She claims to have grown up “poor, white” but there’d not much info beyond that.
JanMN,
I independently developed the same theory. Evolution likely tilted towards hyperfocus on external traits and characteristics.
Art Deco,
Once again you seem to state a contrarian opinion simply to be contrarian. I have no idea what your parents or grandparents were like, nor have I claimed to. If you are going to claim that Rochester on the Jack Benny Show is the equivalent of Dr. Cliff Huxtable, or Archie Bunker is no different than Marcus Welby, M.D. I’m not sure what more I can write to change your mind.
“… cynical enough…”
Actually, BLM do seem, in addition to their many other talents, to be shake-down artists of the most sublime order. They may call themselves “Marxists” but they are, in fact, Capitalists extraordinaire:
https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1283886317366018049
In fact, it’s as though the Cosa Nostra was their headiest inspiration, their most admired—even beloved—teacher.
(Sentiments and gratitude aside, they should still probably stay out of Italian neighborhoods, which is something I’m certain they’re prudent enough to realize.)
Barry,
It’s such an amazing coincidence that anytime you find billions of dollars being shuttled about greedy, disingenuous grifters show up. Maybe the federal government can fund a study to determine if there are any causal variables to this phenomenon? Or someone can found a think tank to study it?
I have no idea what your parents or grandparents were like, nor have I claimed to. If you are going to claim that Rochester on the Jack Benny Show is the equivalent of Dr. Cliff Huxtable, or Archie Bunker is no different than Marcus Welby, M.D. I’m not sure what more I can write to change your mind.
You’re attributing to me (1) something I neither stated nor implied about (2) a phenomenon I do not think important.