And the intersectional Marxist “community leaders” count on that… and McWhorter knows that, too.

Now do Caribbean Black immigrants to the US.

Thanks

From IrishOtter49 @:6:28PM
Black students, girls as well as boys, were manifestly more disruptive and violent, and by several orders of magnitude, than the white students,

From CICERO @ 12:25 PM:
McWhorter is a Columbia prof “specializing in Black English”, and there is the problem or problems. Why is a costly Ivy League university teaching black English to its students? Why dignify the disuniting black English by teaching it?

McWhorter, it seems, takes the position that excessive violence is not necessarily a “black problem” but is ingrained in certain sections of human culture, especially the Scots-Irish branch.

I get that; I live at the southern tail of the Applachian prong, and don’t have to go too far into it to see the divisions; there are places where a 12th generation family is still referred to as “the new people.” I have roots in Tidewater which isn’t too dissimilar; we’ve been here since before the Pilgrims and while, today, few there know me, but if I identify myself as “so-and-so’s grandson” they know the family name, and acknowledge it.

There are similar familial structures across, not just America, but the world; few seem to propagate the level of casual, and often immediate, violence we see from American urban blacks.

I’m wondering why, first, that blacks have refused assimilation to America and American culture so strongly, and second, why the larger culture has not just tolerated, but accepted, it and often encouraged it.

Their history, and heritage, in America was forced labor; as slaves they had no choice about being here, and their lives were the result of that for several generations. It began to turn around in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, but was still largely in stasis until the late 1940s when the federal government started bringing its power to bear: President Truman desegregated the U.S.military in 1948, the Supreme Court ruled on Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 and Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas in 1957 to enforce the ruling. In 1964 the federal civil rights act was passed.

Beleagured groups tend to form, and retain, their own associations as a measure of self protection and advancement; Jews have done it worldwide, Christians do it in the Middle East, Asians do it in every U.S. metropolis, and it’s not limited to racial or religious identities; like attracts like and unity brings not only a degree of social comfort and, potentially, security, it offers exchange of ideas and experiences and reinforces those associations.

Transformation of a sequestered segment of society into full membership status does not occur instantly, nor can it be forced; it’s a gradual process. Not all that long ago many people smoked, and smoking was accepted everywhere; now, not only are there restrictions against it in many places and organizations, it’s dropped quite significantly in social acceptance. A gradual process.

Smoking becoming less than acceptable occurred over about 25 years or so; we’ve had much longer to fully incorporate former slave society into Greater America; it has not happened, at least not to the degree that would connote full, or nearly complete, assimilation, and it looks like a lot of that is the result of blacks insisting on remaining separate.

People have come here from all over the world, admittedly, voluntarily and not by force; there are neighborhoods in most cities bearing those imprints, and businesses that favor, and quite visibly promote, the associations. None that I’m aware of are so clannish as to deliberately seek exclusion from the greater whole as black culture (excepting, perhaps, the recent influx of Muslims). Pick any immigrant group, and usually by the third generation “Americanization” of families is very well estabished; “old country” traditions and values are not discarded but honored, and temper the assimilation into American culture, becoming fully American while respecting their heritage.

That does not seem to have happened with blacks, and while it’s understandable that they may have a “burr under their saddle” over the issue of slavery and their manner of coming to America – slavery is undeniably wrong, in any type or manner, shape, manifestation or location, and should never have been allowed in a country whose founding principles are freedom and liberty, but it did, and we cannot change the unfortunate past – but blacks serve no benefit to themselves by disdaining full incorporation into American society and culture, nor does that larger culture glory itself by accepting, and offering encouragement, toward the lack of assimilation that separation delivers.

I did think the Selwyn Duke essay was more clear about what the problems are. McWhorter was trying to explain but making feeble excuses as well. What Duke pointed out was that the black redneck culture has been expanded and made more violent by the “entertainment” media and social media.

— Kate

This^^.

For decades now, ever since the Great Society, the government (both Federal and State) and elite class have been busily feeding the worst elements of poor, and especially black, culture. (Possibly) well-intended welfare programs worked to shatter family structures, leaving young men with few or no decent adult male role models, and female-led families having difficulty enforcing authority on young men. Media repeatedly told young black men that ‘it’s whitey’s fault’, always. After a while, this sort of thing accumulates.

Which is not to excuse Karmelo Anthony’s choices. Only to recognize some of what might have fed into them.

I remember, many years ago, listening to Limbaugh one day when he commented that the Great Society might have had good intentions, but had devastated the black family.

An old black woman called in later in the show to dispute that. Not that the damage had happened, if anything she argued that Limbaugh was understating it. She argued that it was not good-intentioned, but rather political self-interest and malice on the part of elite liberals that drove it, and she made some good arguments.

I liked McWhorter’s “Losing The Race”. I don’t know if it deliberately connected with Ogbu’s work in Shaker Heights schools, but some of the conclusions matched.

While black parents and the school board invited Ogbu to research why black students’ achievement in Shaker Heights lagged behind white students, they didn’t like his conclusions and recommendations. (Attitudes of black parents and students…) Which meant that Ogbu’s recommendations were not followed.

Several decades later, academic articles and news reports found out that the black-white achievement gap in Shaker Heights schools had not changed. As Ogbu’s recommendations were not followed, Ogbu can’t be blamed.

And yes, McWhorter’s and Ogbu’s conclusions were fairly similar.

McWhorter spoke as if the blacks in the south came into contact with the Scots-Irish honor culture _through the slave-owners_ . I think it was rather the poorer, lower-“class” Scots-Irish who didn’t have the wealth to own slaves but who populated parts of the south, with whom the blacks came into contact and could have been exposed to this culture.

Slaves had plenty of contact with their owners. Honor culture in the South: such as the duels. Such as Senator Brooks of Mass being beaten within an inch of his life in the Senate Chambers for insulting a relative of a South Carolina congressman.

Overseers: while lower class than the owners, they were enforcing the rules that the owners laid down.
Slaves in the South had plenty of exposure to honor culture, from the upper classes on down.

McWhorter spoke as if the blacks in the south came into contact with the Scots-Irish honor culture _through the slave-owners_ . I think it was rather the poorer, lower-“class” Scots-Irish who didn’t have the wealth to own slaves but who populated parts of the south, with whom the blacks came into contact and could have been exposed to this culture.

In any case, discovering that a cultural practice in the present may derive from something we can point to in the past is hardly _exculpatory_ for Karmelo Anthony and others who behave like him. But it seemed, from McWhorter’s piece, that that was his intent. Another strike against McWhorter (in my opinion).

Yes, that was the end of my respect for McWhorter too.

–The Glenn Show, “John McWhorter – June 2024 Q&A”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPKxLaR3-1A&t=1069s

Yes, his apology that he shouldn’t have said so publicly wasn’t an apology.