The real MLK was a person who tried to expand the Civil Rights into a broader, class-based struggle as embodied in the Poor People's Campaign and the Memphis Sanitation Strike. Kendi, in contrast, gives us the Neoliberal MLK, who dances for peanuts from the oligarchs allegedly on behalf of his race in the interest of dividing class solidarity.
While I appreciate Mr. Roscoe's essay each dataset such as this also reminds me of a George Carlin joke I saw him perform on the Tonight Show years ago. He called it "partial scores." Example: 'in yesterday's baseball game, Cleveland 3.' Did Cleveland win or lose? We can't tell if we don't know what the other team did.
Similarly, though our country is special in many ways we are still human beings like citizens of other nations. How have they dealt with their issues of race, ethniicity, religion?
Even more concerning is the situation in the Scandinavian countries: At the end of the nineteenth century their societies made a deliberate effort to reduce social inequality and prejudice. Swedish sociologists gained world attention by studying American racism and Jim Crow. I remember watching Sunday morning shows like Meet the Press and Face the Nation when MLK was leading civil rights march in the South. There would often be a Swede lecturing the American audience about how we did not live up to our ideals of freedom and equality.
Then, in the 1970s the Swedes abruptly shut up. A spate of racist incidents in their country shocked them. I dare say that no one in Sweden or Denmark would today claim that there was less racism in their societies today than had been the case fifty years ago. What can we learn from that turn of events? How do we prevent backtracking from the progress we have already made?
Dunno if this is off-topic. Anyhoo... Looking for empirical studies of question: Percentage of Blacks inclined towards GREATER integration or LESSER integration with whites. Or even anecdotal "evidence." Just thought I'd ask, is all.
Sorry to be so "talkative" today, but on same email from 1776 Unites & Woodson Center had one more article that I thought would interest, mebbe, SOMEone or other here. On police funding, by one who knows VALUE of things via hard knocks.
Me? I just don't see quality of CHARACTER in the woke. VIRTUALLY none at all. But old saw is "even a blind squirrel can find a nut, once-in-a-while." They wanna REPLACE police with something-or-other. Along lines of non-armed people of some kind. And I just can't FIND any reason police funding can't be increased for more training, as author proposes for reasons she said.
Nor for MORE funding, police or otherwise, for NON-UNION ?? I dunno what to call 'em. People who are unarmed to patrol the neighborhoods. "Liaisons," mebbe. Dunno. Preferably by foot, but then that may take too many people to cover an area. FUNDS being what they always are, which is scarce.
At same time, unfortunately, an idea like the lady's (sorry, M. Bennet-Stone) isn't worth much these days unless it costs a few $BILLION. And the more I think about government in general, the more I think the Feds are next-to-worthless. Block grants to states and cities makes sense, tho. Never happen, AFAIK, until there's a big change in scenery around D.C., that would remove Democratic WEEDS. But that's just me.
The civil rights movement was hijacked by "Call me Black " radical Stokely Carmile. The devolution caused by the psychological dishonesty of identity = the color black is behind the dissolution of everything the negro had genuinely achieved including the hoped for spiritual rewards and example of something similar to the Jewish people. Instead seduction and voice replaced the true story, history and fulfillment of "We shall overcome" with rock solid Virtue the basis of a truly American identity and no need for the lies of a fantastical made up history which frankly has led to the most Contemptible behavior setting new lows in US history. Only voluntary renunciation of the government policies that outlaw the competitive spirit will the equality of peoples be achieved.
I pray that CNN's announcement of Sputnik moment to preserve our freedom by beating China in their supersonic something that travelled 5x the speed of sound around the entire world last summer while Biden administration prurient ly pursued toilet equality. I do so like your show. Perhaps I sound like a bigot, but I have been repulsed by the hatred and perversion of my sweet America and the rejection of Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. The human heart recognizes Truth if uncorrupted As you know the Left projects their Fundamental bigotry, in most result of personal corruption and self hatred, onto the more intellectually consistent and virtuous traditional Republicans. Also research is exposing the lack of value placed on Freedom by ~30% of people in this country. Only a virtuous people...
Interesting approach and helpful until you realize he’s a faith based bloke and that’s why johns exposing the mind forged manacles of woke anti racism religion calls out Clinton’s fairytale viewpointing
I have been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and the best conclusion is an analogy; war. In war, you fight on all fronts, and this, the war against the three-names or woke or elect, or whatever you want to call them, is a fight on multiple fronts; the neighborhood, the campuses, TV, and so on. And, like Hydra, all must be defeated.
John is fighting the battle he can fight, and while Mr. Roscoe is correct in that there is tremendous destruction going on right now and that needs desperately to be addressed, the woke are dropping bombs, so to speak, and someone needs to clear that space so those bombs are either less effective or non-existent. If that doesn't happen, there will be no space safe for the work that needs to be done at the ground level of working on education opportunities for black children, black families will continue to suffer, and all the other problems that Mr. Roscoe identifies will be pushed to the back burner while the cheap and easy sloganeering of things that are important to white liberals takes precedence.
So, no, Mr. McWhorter isn't barking up the wrong tree, he is bringing the fight to the enemy of black progress.
Whilst I can completely understand Mr Roscoe’s frustration, I think what he’s overlooking is that addressing the issues he raises doesn’t happen in an political, ethical or philosophical vacuum. How we see the problem, what we prioritise, what we see as policy prescriptions and what a just outcomes looks like is all shaped by our understanding of ‘social justice’ in its broadest understanding.
How a Marxist, a Rawlsian liberal or a Hayekian Libertarian would see these issues and what they believe needs to be done would differ greatly. Whilst I don’t think we need to spend all our time naval gazing and picking apart Rawls, I do think our normative visions of justice matter in profound ways. I think it’s why I don’t see what JMcW is taking on as small beans. The direction The Elect is taking us in, isn’t just misguided pseudo academic ramblings but an attempt to shift our conception of justice in a fundamental way and I think it’s likely to have profound implications for how societies address social issues, what kind of outcomes we should be seeking, what we focus on, what policies we enact and why. I think it may have possibly even more profound effects on house citizens view themselves, their situations and their relationships to other citizens. I think that the ideologies that are beginning to have a huge impact on institutions (not just in US but in many Western nations) are both incoherent and likely to have a pernicious impact. Trying to mitigate that impact, trying to get our understanding of the issues our societies face rooted in a sounder footing isn’t some sideline to the real deal.
I don't think immigration reform has been mentioned. When it comes to helping black people who are being left behind, it seems to me that the governmental action likely to have the biggest and fastest impact is cutting way back on the immigration of unskilled laborers. The Trump administration was the first one in recent memory (among either Reps or Dems) to make a serious push in that direction, and (IIRC) before the COVID shutdowns, black unemployment was at an all time low, and wages for entry-level jobs were actually starting to go up, as one would expect when the unskilled labor force has stopped or significantly slowed its growth.
Yes. Learned people agree on the McWhorter’s 3. A few learned people are skeptical. But the vast majority agree McWhorter’s 3 would solve large swath of problem.
Thank you for lending your ear to the piece by your colleague Mr. Clifton Roscoe. For my part, his piece brings to my mind, in a way evoked by music and lryics like those of Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell , as in, “ …just an old, sweet song”, those lines from Booker T. Washington, “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are”. In “my mind’s ear” if you will, I hear a harmony across the century between these two. Washington presages the stakes of the status quo cited by Roscoe. Again Washington and Roscoe sound like they are singing praise from the same hymn book as regarding men like, King Randall, and his academy for vocational training, life skills and traditional academics. I am thankful for the voices of all three of these men, and you John Lowery, and that I have ears to hear.
This is not directly to Mr. Roscoe's column, but I thought some reader's would be curious about a tweet that Ibram X. Kendi wrote and then deleted about white students lying about being Native Americans to get college admissions advantage.
What I link to is written by Dr. Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus at UChicago in evolutionary biology who runs a terrific site called "Why Evolution Is true".
It's worth your 10 minutes: "Deconstruction of a Twitter fracas involving Ibram Kendi".
Clifton Roscoe does an impressive job using data to describe the crises that imperil Black America, but I think he’s wrong in arguing that Black intellectuals are wasting their energy writing books like Woke Racism instead of drawing people’s attention to and developing proposals that would address the specific issues that impact the lives of Black people, like gun violence.
First, Roscoe is confusing two different kinds of intellectual work. On the one hand, as Roscoe argues, there is a clear need to identify the drivers of social problems that plague low-income Black communities and address them through evidence-informed, data-driven interventions and policymaking. This kind of work is important because it is focused on directly improving the lives of people who are suffering and dying in communities throughout the country. But on the other hand, there is in some ways a more fundamental need to take on the cultural assumptions that influence, limit, and even determine how policymakers understand the nature of social problems and what can be done about them. While books like Woke Racism are not going to directly help low-income Black communities, they can challenge the dominant assumptions held by America’s cultural elite that support ineffective policies and programs in a way that actual policy and programmatic work unfortunately is not capable of doing.
The second problem with Roscoe’s argument is that it rests on a false choice. To help low-income Black communities, we need policy solutions and critique of the cultural assumptions that reinforce our ineffective policies and our woke politics. This is going to require a broad coalition and a diverse array of talent. While McWhorter might be able to use his abilities to identify and address particular policy problems, he is, without question, uniquely effective at making cultural arguments that challenge the woke status quo. But that in no way suggests we don’t need his policy wonk or program specialist equivalent. We absolutely do! I’d argue that this need is especially acute in gun violence work--which has been largely taken over by advocates who see gun violence reduction through an Ibram X Kendi lens.
Lastly, I think what makes McWhorter's (and Loury’s!) work so important right now is that they show that the unique problems that Black America face are not simply a crisis for Black Americans, but rather the assumptions that stand behind the crises in Black American communities and the politics they engender threaten the American body politic. I don’t mean to suggest that Roscoe was arguing that we should adopt a narrow race-centered policy framework, nor do I want to argue against devising specific interventions to address the particular problems in low-income Black communities. But I think as long as this work is framed solely around racial lines it will tend to reproduce the solipsistic, identity-driven policies, politics, and cultural assumptions that have led us to this perilous moment.
The real MLK was a person who tried to expand the Civil Rights into a broader, class-based struggle as embodied in the Poor People's Campaign and the Memphis Sanitation Strike. Kendi, in contrast, gives us the Neoliberal MLK, who dances for peanuts from the oligarchs allegedly on behalf of his race in the interest of dividing class solidarity.
While I appreciate Mr. Roscoe's essay each dataset such as this also reminds me of a George Carlin joke I saw him perform on the Tonight Show years ago. He called it "partial scores." Example: 'in yesterday's baseball game, Cleveland 3.' Did Cleveland win or lose? We can't tell if we don't know what the other team did.
Similarly, though our country is special in many ways we are still human beings like citizens of other nations. How have they dealt with their issues of race, ethniicity, religion?
Even more concerning is the situation in the Scandinavian countries: At the end of the nineteenth century their societies made a deliberate effort to reduce social inequality and prejudice. Swedish sociologists gained world attention by studying American racism and Jim Crow. I remember watching Sunday morning shows like Meet the Press and Face the Nation when MLK was leading civil rights march in the South. There would often be a Swede lecturing the American audience about how we did not live up to our ideals of freedom and equality.
Then, in the 1970s the Swedes abruptly shut up. A spate of racist incidents in their country shocked them. I dare say that no one in Sweden or Denmark would today claim that there was less racism in their societies today than had been the case fifty years ago. What can we learn from that turn of events? How do we prevent backtracking from the progress we have already made?
Dunno if this is off-topic. Anyhoo... Looking for empirical studies of question: Percentage of Blacks inclined towards GREATER integration or LESSER integration with whites. Or even anecdotal "evidence." Just thought I'd ask, is all.
Sorry to be so "talkative" today, but on same email from 1776 Unites & Woodson Center had one more article that I thought would interest, mebbe, SOMEone or other here. On police funding, by one who knows VALUE of things via hard knocks.
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-train-defund-police-20211103-6uce36cjxzeufos5jxcubulkua-story.html?mc_cid=70864b55f9&mc_eid=097d2c227f
Me? I just don't see quality of CHARACTER in the woke. VIRTUALLY none at all. But old saw is "even a blind squirrel can find a nut, once-in-a-while." They wanna REPLACE police with something-or-other. Along lines of non-armed people of some kind. And I just can't FIND any reason police funding can't be increased for more training, as author proposes for reasons she said.
Nor for MORE funding, police or otherwise, for NON-UNION ?? I dunno what to call 'em. People who are unarmed to patrol the neighborhoods. "Liaisons," mebbe. Dunno. Preferably by foot, but then that may take too many people to cover an area. FUNDS being what they always are, which is scarce.
At same time, unfortunately, an idea like the lady's (sorry, M. Bennet-Stone) isn't worth much these days unless it costs a few $BILLION. And the more I think about government in general, the more I think the Feds are next-to-worthless. Block grants to states and cities makes sense, tho. Never happen, AFAIK, until there's a big change in scenery around D.C., that would remove Democratic WEEDS. But that's just me.
The civil rights movement was hijacked by "Call me Black " radical Stokely Carmile. The devolution caused by the psychological dishonesty of identity = the color black is behind the dissolution of everything the negro had genuinely achieved including the hoped for spiritual rewards and example of something similar to the Jewish people. Instead seduction and voice replaced the true story, history and fulfillment of "We shall overcome" with rock solid Virtue the basis of a truly American identity and no need for the lies of a fantastical made up history which frankly has led to the most Contemptible behavior setting new lows in US history. Only voluntary renunciation of the government policies that outlaw the competitive spirit will the equality of peoples be achieved.
I pray that CNN's announcement of Sputnik moment to preserve our freedom by beating China in their supersonic something that travelled 5x the speed of sound around the entire world last summer while Biden administration prurient ly pursued toilet equality. I do so like your show. Perhaps I sound like a bigot, but I have been repulsed by the hatred and perversion of my sweet America and the rejection of Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. The human heart recognizes Truth if uncorrupted As you know the Left projects their Fundamental bigotry, in most result of personal corruption and self hatred, onto the more intellectually consistent and virtuous traditional Republicans. Also research is exposing the lack of value placed on Freedom by ~30% of people in this country. Only a virtuous people...
Interesting approach and helpful until you realize he’s a faith based bloke and that’s why johns exposing the mind forged manacles of woke anti racism religion calls out Clinton’s fairytale viewpointing
Garry Walker Writes Garry’s Newsletter ·Nov 1
I cant wait to read the piece. What a great discussion in the comments as well. I’m charmed seeing the title include “Barking up the wrong tree”. A few weeks ago I posted a piece with a similar title. Its called “The Right Trees” https://garryf81.substack.com/p/the-right-trees?r=eo3di&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
Perhaps there’s hope for my new writing endeavor.
I have been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and the best conclusion is an analogy; war. In war, you fight on all fronts, and this, the war against the three-names or woke or elect, or whatever you want to call them, is a fight on multiple fronts; the neighborhood, the campuses, TV, and so on. And, like Hydra, all must be defeated.
John is fighting the battle he can fight, and while Mr. Roscoe is correct in that there is tremendous destruction going on right now and that needs desperately to be addressed, the woke are dropping bombs, so to speak, and someone needs to clear that space so those bombs are either less effective or non-existent. If that doesn't happen, there will be no space safe for the work that needs to be done at the ground level of working on education opportunities for black children, black families will continue to suffer, and all the other problems that Mr. Roscoe identifies will be pushed to the back burner while the cheap and easy sloganeering of things that are important to white liberals takes precedence.
So, no, Mr. McWhorter isn't barking up the wrong tree, he is bringing the fight to the enemy of black progress.
Whilst I can completely understand Mr Roscoe’s frustration, I think what he’s overlooking is that addressing the issues he raises doesn’t happen in an political, ethical or philosophical vacuum. How we see the problem, what we prioritise, what we see as policy prescriptions and what a just outcomes looks like is all shaped by our understanding of ‘social justice’ in its broadest understanding.
How a Marxist, a Rawlsian liberal or a Hayekian Libertarian would see these issues and what they believe needs to be done would differ greatly. Whilst I don’t think we need to spend all our time naval gazing and picking apart Rawls, I do think our normative visions of justice matter in profound ways. I think it’s why I don’t see what JMcW is taking on as small beans. The direction The Elect is taking us in, isn’t just misguided pseudo academic ramblings but an attempt to shift our conception of justice in a fundamental way and I think it’s likely to have profound implications for how societies address social issues, what kind of outcomes we should be seeking, what we focus on, what policies we enact and why. I think it may have possibly even more profound effects on house citizens view themselves, their situations and their relationships to other citizens. I think that the ideologies that are beginning to have a huge impact on institutions (not just in US but in many Western nations) are both incoherent and likely to have a pernicious impact. Trying to mitigate that impact, trying to get our understanding of the issues our societies face rooted in a sounder footing isn’t some sideline to the real deal.
I don't think immigration reform has been mentioned. When it comes to helping black people who are being left behind, it seems to me that the governmental action likely to have the biggest and fastest impact is cutting way back on the immigration of unskilled laborers. The Trump administration was the first one in recent memory (among either Reps or Dems) to make a serious push in that direction, and (IIRC) before the COVID shutdowns, black unemployment was at an all time low, and wages for entry-level jobs were actually starting to go up, as one would expect when the unskilled labor force has stopped or significantly slowed its growth.
I cant wait to read the piece. What a great discussion in the comments as well. I’m charmed seeing the title include “Barking up the wrong tree”. A few weeks ago I posted a piece with a similar title. Its called “The Right Trees” https://garryf81.substack.com/p/the-right-trees?r=eo3di&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=
Perhaps there’s hope for my new writing endeavor.
Glenn any chance there might be an episode of TGS with Mr. Roscoe as the guest? I guess one can dream. :)
Yes. Learned people agree on the McWhorter’s 3. A few learned people are skeptical. But the vast majority agree McWhorter’s 3 would solve large swath of problem.
“Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are”
Thank you for lending your ear to the piece by your colleague Mr. Clifton Roscoe. For my part, his piece brings to my mind, in a way evoked by music and lryics like those of Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell , as in, “ …just an old, sweet song”, those lines from Booker T. Washington, “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are”. In “my mind’s ear” if you will, I hear a harmony across the century between these two. Washington presages the stakes of the status quo cited by Roscoe. Again Washington and Roscoe sound like they are singing praise from the same hymn book as regarding men like, King Randall, and his academy for vocational training, life skills and traditional academics. I am thankful for the voices of all three of these men, and you John Lowery, and that I have ears to hear.
This is not directly to Mr. Roscoe's column, but I thought some reader's would be curious about a tweet that Ibram X. Kendi wrote and then deleted about white students lying about being Native Americans to get college admissions advantage.
What I link to is written by Dr. Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus at UChicago in evolutionary biology who runs a terrific site called "Why Evolution Is true".
It's worth your 10 minutes: "Deconstruction of a Twitter fracas involving Ibram Kendi".
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/10/31/deconstruction-of-a-twitter-fracas-involving-ibram-kendi/
Clifton Roscoe does an impressive job using data to describe the crises that imperil Black America, but I think he’s wrong in arguing that Black intellectuals are wasting their energy writing books like Woke Racism instead of drawing people’s attention to and developing proposals that would address the specific issues that impact the lives of Black people, like gun violence.
First, Roscoe is confusing two different kinds of intellectual work. On the one hand, as Roscoe argues, there is a clear need to identify the drivers of social problems that plague low-income Black communities and address them through evidence-informed, data-driven interventions and policymaking. This kind of work is important because it is focused on directly improving the lives of people who are suffering and dying in communities throughout the country. But on the other hand, there is in some ways a more fundamental need to take on the cultural assumptions that influence, limit, and even determine how policymakers understand the nature of social problems and what can be done about them. While books like Woke Racism are not going to directly help low-income Black communities, they can challenge the dominant assumptions held by America’s cultural elite that support ineffective policies and programs in a way that actual policy and programmatic work unfortunately is not capable of doing.
The second problem with Roscoe’s argument is that it rests on a false choice. To help low-income Black communities, we need policy solutions and critique of the cultural assumptions that reinforce our ineffective policies and our woke politics. This is going to require a broad coalition and a diverse array of talent. While McWhorter might be able to use his abilities to identify and address particular policy problems, he is, without question, uniquely effective at making cultural arguments that challenge the woke status quo. But that in no way suggests we don’t need his policy wonk or program specialist equivalent. We absolutely do! I’d argue that this need is especially acute in gun violence work--which has been largely taken over by advocates who see gun violence reduction through an Ibram X Kendi lens.
Lastly, I think what makes McWhorter's (and Loury’s!) work so important right now is that they show that the unique problems that Black America face are not simply a crisis for Black Americans, but rather the assumptions that stand behind the crises in Black American communities and the politics they engender threaten the American body politic. I don’t mean to suggest that Roscoe was arguing that we should adopt a narrow race-centered policy framework, nor do I want to argue against devising specific interventions to address the particular problems in low-income Black communities. But I think as long as this work is framed solely around racial lines it will tend to reproduce the solipsistic, identity-driven policies, politics, and cultural assumptions that have led us to this perilous moment.