John McWhorter talks
"Woke Racism" author talks about the dark side of the "social justice religion"
Thanks to c-Span for airing my Commonwealth Club interview with John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” over the weekend.
The book, he told me, is for people from the left of center — black, white, other — who are gulled into thinking they don’t really have authority to talk about race constructively.
“There’s a facile idea that what white people want to hear must automatically be racist and letting white people off the hook,” he said. This book is antidote to that thinking.
McWhorter started to write the book after Alison Roman, a food writer at the New York Times, was targeted and ultimately fired for criticizing Chrissy Tiegen and Marie Kondo for being too commercial. Tiegen is half Thai and Kondo is a Japanese citizen — hence, the mob decided that Roman was punching down against Asians.
McWhorter’s take: Roughly 7 1/2 people got her fired - for remarks that were not racist.
“What they did is a barbarity,” McWhorter said of the mob that went after Roman, and the worst part is that the people who robbed Roman of her job no doubt believed they were good people doing a good thing. He calls it a “social justice religion.”
Read the book. It calls out extremists who consider themselves “The Elect.” “Electism calls for everyone who isn’t white to found their primary sense of self on not being being white and knowing whites don’t quite ‘get’ me.” This view, he writes, “exaggerates the role of racism in most black lives.”
I also recommend joining the 15,000 plus folk who watched the video on YouTube.
Watch the interview. McWhorter’s discussion about his education were a surprise. He studied at Simon’s Rock, Rutgers, NYU and Columbia. A moment of serendipity made him decide to be a linguist. His response was unexpected. (“I went to Rutgers for no reason at all.” And that’s not a hit on Rutgers.)
“None of this had anything to do with becoming a race commentator.”
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.
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