Last week, I recorded a conversation with Winkfield Twyman Jr. and Jennifer Richmond for the podcast The Dissidents. Ostensibly, this is a discussion of my memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, but we end up venturing far beyond the confines of the book. I liked the conversation so much that I asked them if I could cross-post it here. And if you get as much out of it as I do, check out Winkfield and Jennifer’s book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America that documents their years-long epistolary exchange.
We begin with a discussion of Late Admissions. Both Winkfield and Jennifer are incisive readers of the text, and they ask me about how, when I was a practicing Christian, I balanced the apparent conflict between my rational skepticism and my religious belief. Jennifer wants to know how much my working-class origins contributes to my sense of myself as a black man. Moving beyond the memoir, we debate the problem with reparations and the practical viability of colorblindness as (to my mind) inherently flawed “solutions” to the race problem. Winkfield thinks that conformity to progressive views about race is putting us on the road to totalitarianism. Really? I’m a critic of woke racial orthodoxy, but it’s a long, long way from progressive scolding to the gulag.
This is a bonus episode of The Glenn Show. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below.
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0:00 Great writing is “a marriage of life and honesty”
3:20 Glenn: I am my book’s primary audience
8:00 Glenn the Rationalist vs Glenn the Believer
18:00 How much did Glenn’s socio-economic status affect his sense of black belonging?
24:26 The radical rhetoric of privileged African Americans
29:38 Against reparations
33:57 A raised fist, but not a hand out
40:27 Colorblindness in theory and practice
50:11 Is race orthodoxy the first step on the road to totalitarianism?
1:03:01 Self-reliance and individualism
Recorded June 26, 2024
Links and Readings
Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative
Jennifer and Winkfield’s book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race
Stephen Shames and Ericka Huggins’s book, Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party
Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker’s cookbook, Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen
Thomas Chatterton Williams’s book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race
Sheena Michele Mason’s forthcoming book, The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race Is the Future of Antiracism
Coleman Hughes’s book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America
Winkfield and Jennifer’s conversation with Angel Eduardo
Václav Havel’s book, The Power of the Powerless
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance”
Winkfield Twyman Jr. & Jennifer Richmond – Black Identity's Divisive History [Bonus Episode]