I make sure that I do not preface my remarks with "as a Pole" when criticzing Polish antisemitism, or "as a Jew" when criticizing Jewish stereotypes of Poles as responsible for the Holocaust. I was born in Poland. My father is Polish. My mother was raised in an assimilated Jewsih family in Warsaw, and she survived the Holocaust. When I criticize Polish antisemism and am accused of being bigoted against Poles, that's when I say I was born in Poland and that I lived there for eight months in 1988 and for three months in 1992. When I criticize overly-broad Jewish stereotypes of Poles and am accused of antisemitism, that's when I say my mother was a Holocaust survivor.
Still, my ethnicity is very much secondary to my identity. I regard it as a form of mental illness that is responsible for a high percentage of human conflicts when people identify themselves PRIMARILY as members of a particular ethnic, national, racial, etc. group.
I believe anyone in a society who has had sufficient contact with members of another racial or ethnic group, and who has enough empathy or ability to use their imagination, can understand pretty well what it is like to be a member of a different group. On the other hand, I doubt anyone who has not spent time in a much different society on a different continent, such as with a tribe in the Amazon, is cabable of imagining what it is like to be a member of that group. It' probably possible to imagine to a limited extent with enough self-education.
But there are categories of people whom it is impossible to understand unless you are a member of them. For instance, I survived years of near-pyschotic depression as a result of a brain infection that was exacerbated a thousandfold by incompetent doctors. There is no language availabled to describe what it's like to experience involuntary suicidal ideation every second of the day and night., or to be incapable of speaking much of the time because it causes too much psychic agony, for years without remission.
So I think that in some instances, identifying oneself as a member of a group does signify epistemic knowledge that is unavailable to a meaninful extent to other people. But the experience of that group has to be very far outside the norm of typical human experience.
You’ve commented previously on how “white people aren’t a people”, and I think you questioned whether black people
could be lumped together as a people. I don’t think you made a conclusion on that, but in no large group do all members exhibit some common traits or tendencies beyond the superficial, so those are correct lines of thinking - that we can generalize but there’ll never be a union of individuals such that one and all could be reliably interchangeable. This conversation should continue over years, then maybe the rules and parameters could be more transparent, and the methodologies could be more consistent.
But still, being white is an experience that people who aren't white don't have. And contrary to the opinion of black racists, white people *do* have valid opinions and 'lived experiences' that others don't share. I think it would be awesome if POC asked white people what it's like trying to navigate a world in which we're at the top and how we handle living in a racist society and what it's like trying to be non-racist, where some refuse to see us as anything but, because they only judge us by the colour of our skin.
It was interesting how a few months ago, a few black women lost their shit at Uber when their DEI consultant gave a few talks on the racism being 'Karenism' and started in with the usual victimy whines about how uncomfortable they felt.
Discomfort, for some of these people, is only for us white devils.
The "as a black man" phrase callout seems somewhat trivial compared to the other issues that plague our society.
Nonetheless, the way I see it, the phrase “as a black man” could be used by well-intentioned individuals to kickstart a dialogue or argument.
Imagine...
- “as a plumber”
- “as a doctor”
- “as an 5-time gold medal winner”
These verbal tools functions similarly to an affirmation question such as, "We're in agreement that I am Black, correct?" This initial affirmation, or 'micro-yes,' is meant to establish a common understanding, which then paves the way for any subsequent statements or questions to be more readily accepted or engaged with.
Honestly, I believe the term is less nefarious than one might assume.
As much as I dislike it, I often preface comments I write in the Times, for instance, with "as a gay man..." because I'm usually about to slam the excesses of gender-queer activism and I need to flash my credentials, or the comment won't be approved. If I need LGBT young ones to dial it back, I'll say "as a gay man of a certain age," which marks me as both a survivor of the "gay plague" as well as a freedom fighter of sorts. It gives me a considerable leg up and automatic respect, in a Rosa Parks sort of way. Those are but two examples of many instances when I need to assert that aspect of my identity .
I noticed a few years ago when a Black friend I went to boarding school with in Italy visited me in LA that her interactions with other Blacks were quite different from mine, something that wasn't there are all when we lived together in New York in our early 20s; I believe it's because there are far more Southern than Yankee Blacks in LA, and that's a completely different dynamic. There was an instant camaraderie, brighter smiles, a sassier lilt in the exchange, which I found endearing and understandable.
This friend and her mother, Deloise — 60s poet, shaved head, blue fingernails tapping her carved Nigerian throne in the living room, raspy laugh, "James, you are a DIZZY child" — dunked and baptized me in New York Blackness when I was a teen. The experience of being the Other at parties they took me to in Harlem was a precious gift, an honor that was also transformative. They immersed me in that wondrous interconnectedness among Blacks as an always-outsider, but it was fine, it was right, there was no problem with it. It was how Vanessa and Deloise would feel if I took them to a Bloody Mary booze-up with my community on the porch of the family's cottage in a summer colony with the shield of the Episcopal Church hanging discretely over the entrance. They would be welcomed, but they would need to be there a long time before they stopped feeling their Otherness. But a working class Irish plumber from South Boston would feel no differently.
I view you both as Black Anglo-American Yankees, as I view Obama; his lockjawed upper-crusty drone is heavier than mine. That is how I would characterize your specific shared ethnicity. It's distinct from Charles Blow's clueless Louisiana-backwater hick; he's no different from his White counterparts in that region. By my estimation, growing up in an all-Black town and attending an HBCU half an hour away meant Blow likely had no significant encounters with Whites until his mid-20s, by which time he was fully indoctrinated in a view of universal White supremacy/privilege/fragility/gazeness that he has rigged by any means necessary to fit White Yankees, like an Ugly Stepsister in 'Cinderella' cutting off her toes to jam that fragile glass slipper on feet that don't deserve it.
As a gay man, I'm allowed to feminize Miss Blow. You aren't.
When Blow says "as a Black man" it's a political stance. When you guys say it, it's infused with a certain Anglo-American Yankee politeness that frames what you're going to say next, sort of like, "In my opinion..." or "My observation is..." You're leaving the discussion open, not dropping a heavy manifesto and crushing it.
Tangentially: After he abused his bully pulpit at the Times yet again and had Pepé Le Pew canceled because he represented "rape culture," my Liberal therapist broke protocol and assessed that Blow was "deranged." His need to make his viewpoint fit is pure cognitive dissonance/distortion.
As a gay man, my experience is that when I meet other gays or lesbians socially, we will also share a nodding, smiling commonality of experience, often with a subtle shift in tone, a bigger smile; if we discount kids trying LGBT on as a fad, we're only ~5% of the population — there's comfort in not being "the only Ghey in the village," to borrow a character from 'Little Britain.' We have a distinctive culture with complex protocols that are as deep as any other social group's. A straight person at a gathering might say something he or she thinks is flattering — "Really? You don't seem gay AT ALL" — and the other gay will look at me, exchange a quick smile, but no eye roll or resentment at the passive "homophobia." It is what it is, and it's certainly not evidence of malice or prejudice, just unfamiliarity with the complexities of our subculture.
Otherness is not only perfectly natural and fine, it's a wonderful thing. I mentioned growing up in Italy; I've spent vast portions of my life as the Other — I love it. I lived in India long enough that I was honored to be the MC of the first televised Miss India Pageant. I would go for months without seeing another White person. If I went to rural areas, they would form a ring around me in train stations, just watching me, unblinking, like I was a curious, exotic creature in a zoo who might surprise and delight them with some trick of the tail. It was weird at first — Indians don't know that in the West it's considered rude to stare — but I grew used to it quickly.
Otherness is the only true diversity in the conversation, not proof of racism or homophobia, or whatever other threat-elevation golem they're molding in critical social justice cabals across America and the Western world. While on the one hand I think we make too much of our differences in America — I rarely support Dr. McWhorter's preoccupation with nuance — I believe that if you speak English as your native language with an American accent you are an Anglo-American of [insert ethnicity] descent. It's something I've been exploring recently in my — yes, sorry, giving myself a plug, AGAIN — newsletter.
Thanks for the platform, Dr. Loury. I hope you'll forgive my shameless prestige borrowing, again. Keep on truckin' — you're exploring necessary things that most others are too terrified to talk about.
James, Thank you for the very eloquent and brave defense of otherness. You stated it more concisely and nuanced than I ever could. Differences are okay. Differences are good. Differences make people interesting. When I ask a question about someone with a different background, ethnicity, or culture, I'm not trying to marginalize them (or heaven forbid I fail to use the most woke nom d'jour -- "denying their right to exist"), rather I'm legitimately trying to understand more about them. Keep up the good work, my friend. To all who say these Substack comments are where the real thought occurs: absolutely concur!
Why the digression attacking Charles Blow? By what authority do you presume to cancel "Miss" Blow's right to identify as a black/gay man? Mr. Blow's op-ed was after the fact of the Dr. Seuss cancellations and only in passing mentioned Pepe Lepew along with other cartoon characters. He quotes James Baldwin. Do you similarly presume to cancel "Miss" Baldwin's black/gay credentials? Did you even read the op-ed? It has a comment section. Seems like that would have been the appropriate place to express your misgivings which are misplaced herein. The sanctimony is breathtaking.
It's not for want of trying to leave comments. Do I know there's a comments section? I believe I mention that in the beginning of my comment here. Comments that didn't blindly support the Robespierre of Wokeism in the aftermath of the post-George Floyd unrest didn't get approved. So I slammed him on Twitter once or twice after the execrable Pepé Le Pew drama, which he very much caused to happen. Get your history straight — it's recent enough that you don't even need presentism to lens it to how you need to read the world.
I took to riffing about him on Facebook as Lady Charlene Blew, So Tired He's In the Past Tense. I rotated his name between the female equivalents of Charles —Charlotte, Carla, Carlotta, Caroline — preceded by a title, followed by "Blew, So Tired He's in the Past Tense" for about a year, until he became irrelevant and no longer the menace to society that he was. Shame he didn't get the guillotine.
Lady Blew does fancy himself the second coming of James Baldwin, although why we need one is anyone's guess. Do we need a second coming of Truman Capote? But Blew is not a good writer, merely a parrot of a Southern Baptists preacher writing in declamatory, bossy paragraphs a sentence long with titles like "You Need to Stop...XYZ." He's the only one who needs to stop.
The entire social justice movement is built on crypto-religious fanatics treating the opinions of fiction writers like Baldwin and De Beauvoir as if they were peer-reviewed sociologists, psychologists and biologists. They're fiction writers.
Baldwin's real chip was the fact he was an ugly gay man who didn't get laid unless he paid for it, like Capote. As is evident from his bonkers, rabidly racist later work, that constant rejection turns you into something called a "bitter old queen," or BOQ+ — I'm adding the plus sign to be inclusive. If Baldwin had a small dick, then he was doubly blighted in a subculture that is based on sex and nothing more, although Darwin knows they've tried to make it more, and more, and more.
So here we are, even more of joke than we were when I was a kid — when at least we were subversive and cool — lorded over by clowns in female blackface fighting for the right to be fully self-expressed by reading fairy tales to children, thereby normalizing misogyny for generations to come through the burlesquing of the most grotesque stereotypes of an entire sex. Like Baldwin, drag queens have a hard time getting laid in Homolandia. If hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned, ain't nothin' compared to what it hath for a female impersonator swiped left on Grindr.
No doubt the NY Times censorship is ridiculous. That said I do get some of my comments past them. Just the other day I told Mr. Blow that if democracy is hanging by a thread he can blame himself for shitting all over Bernie while singing arias in praise of Hillary the only tailor made punching bag Trump could have beaten. Sounds like if anyone is not getting enough sex it's you.
Only recently because I have to have a second hip replacement thanks to a congenital defect inherited from my mother. As a top, I have yet to find a position that doesn't inflame the area. I'm having it next month, after which I'll be back in the saddle.
As a classic BOQ said to me when I was in my mid-30s, "Just wait till you're a daddy." The saying used to be "A gay man dies at 35, and if he's lucky he's reincarnated at 45 as a daddy." I never had that 10-year pause, however; it just accelerrated. Every time I see her my sister says, "You're so lucky," but she's been after my things since we were kids.
I keep waiting for the spigot to turn off, but it doesn't; the daddy fetish runs deep in a community many of whose members' first crushes were their fathers. To top it off, I live in LA, the capitol of shallow when it comes to pulchritude and youth-worship. Doesn't make a difference to me either way, although it might if it were the other way.
I do get more comments approved now by the NY Times than post-June 2020. I don't read Blew and a few others, just as I ignore their counterparts on the alt-right. He's mostly wrong, even more wrong when he doubles down to make himself right and silence opposition. I don't see the point of wasting even five minutes on a predictable, vain, insecure boor, which is how I would characterize Bernie, too.
10 year pause? Is that a punch line? Sorry I'm still doing the math on that one. Good luck with the hip replacement although I suspect you will still be the same BOQ. Hapenis Is Coming.
Which Mean Girl do you identify with? Or is it whichever fits your mood in the morning like a proper gender-fender-bender? Don't forget: On Wednesdays you wear pink!
Do they even let you say "gay man", anymore? Seems like the 'correct' formulation nowadays has to aggregate 'LGBTQ" etc. to signal solidarity with the transgendered. Which may end up being a political miscalculation....
We are no more "LGBT people" than Blacks are "NAACP people." It's a political organization that was set up to advance our rights, then it took on the task of ensuring we have proper medical attention in a sort of "never again" way, and to provide shelter for our runaway youth and neglected elderly. You aren't obliged to pay homage to gender-queerism by using the Q, formerly a pejorative as bad as 'fag/faggot,' but now it's yet another banal radical statement symbolizing "inclusivity," superfluous concept in today's America, but them rebels without a cause... Just making shit up as they pass the talking stick. The excesses Gender-queer activism have splintered the OG LGBT into the LGB Alliance, who are "TQ+ exclusionary," and the alphabet goop. I'd just as well we go back to 'faggot' — I was disappointed when we stopped using it. It was so much more honest.
Thank you for the insight. It does seem to me that "LGBTQ etc." has become a mandatory trope for 'gay', as if it were a requirement of the NY Times style manual. A problem with this broadly inclusive labeling is that it brings identity politics to bear where some of the included don't want it to be. Until 1979, Harry Hay and NAMBLA marched in the gay pride parades around here. I'm pretty sure that the LGBTQ+ identity monitors don't want to be THAT 'inclusive' any more.....
If I gave my opinion publicly about some matter of race or culture, and prefaced my remarks with “ as a white man...”. I suspect I would be branded a white supremacist almost immediately. Anyone watching John and Glenn can already see that they’re black. The statement serves only to add heft to what would surely be an otherwise specious statement. I’m not a fan.
Believing that you would be labeled "a white supremacist" for prefacing your remarks with "as a white man", without laboring to help the reader/listener understand and consider the context of use, assess the individuals involved, and the subject under discussion, seems like an reactionary exaggeration on your part - a world-building fiction, a straw man fallacy or at minimum, a projection of your own making - all due respect. Because If that indeed would ever happen, it’s unfair and not right. Who would ever do that of good intentions?
More a rhetorical device. Would never do it obviously. I hate straw men too. My point is that arguments should be built on argument not sentiment. I do take your point in good faith.
What you say makes me think! On the one hand, just because you might be (unfairly) labeled is insufficient reason to conclude that the phrase is useless. Maybe the labeling is incorrect? On the other hand, I use similar terms specifically because of the epistemic authority derived from them, particularly if that "authority" is not obvious. For example, I might say, "As a runner I find that taking NSAIDS is not helpful." You might not know I am a runner, and so, the preface could be helpful. You could see that I am black, so maybe not so much. Excellent point. However, these podcasts and conversations happen across media, so someone listening only might not have the benefit of seeing that they are obviously black. Might make a difference?
As Professor John McWhorter will tell you, some languages have epistemic markers built in. However, English is not such a language. Accordingly, your epistemic marker has the appearance of authority proclamation ex cathedra. Which brings us back to the previous poster's argument about the appearance of racism and racial supremacism...
I asked the question precisely for this type of insight! The level of discourse on Substack is wonderful. Thanks!
[One other point, added via edit. My goal, with the epistemic marker I "forced into" the conversation is precisely to provide authority ex cathedra. I do not think that is a bad thing, IFF that authority is legitimate. I think being black *might* supply some authority, albeit not necessarily at any cost, implied or otherwise, to someone without that authority. Similarly, for a plumber or a runner. Now, and this is important, that supposedly derived authority could be bogus. For example, a runner might have an opinion about a running subject and be wrong! The context supplied is still helpful, one would hope.]
As has become my habit, I posted this comment to the Youtube channel as well...
It seems to me that John asserted, with some persuasive logic, that the phrase, "as a Black man" does, in fact, provide a type of epistemic authority. To Glenn's point, it is only that this knowledge does not invalidate other knowledge, regardless of how gained. Every opinion has a nexus. If I have an opinion borne of my "black experience" so what? I can still relish and/or more highly value and/or vigorously promote an epistemic basis that includes more than just my blackness. Hopefully, that made some sense!
Thomas Sowell wrote about the shifting cultural norms, the "white southerners" vs. Blacks almost switching perceived roles in society, among other groups. If there truly is "heft," in the term does it indicate a shift in the societal sway/power dynamic of Black folks, at least in the West, from your perspective? Basically, is the term more powerful today than years gone by?
“As a black man...” feels different in that context, especially if used with intention.
Damn, Michael Henry, I will have to think about that more. I do not think the "heft" of the term is different. I think the perception of the speaker who utters it is what is key. BTW, I appreciate your kind words! Sowell's treatise on "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" raised some fascinating questions about the history and shifting cultural norms of which you speak.
Yeah the subject got me thinking...when Glenn and John introduced the subject, I didn't anticipate the mixed reaction it garnered. Folks come out the woodwork with comments expressing counterpoint grievances like I never heard raised before, a soft appeal- it caught me off-guard. Now I want to think about this, why did this happen...
I know everyone disses Bill Cosby these days but eons ago, Mr. Cosby recorded a comedy routine about the vulnerability that black Americans face because of the potential that any white person --including friends-- can instantly racialize the relationship, by simply invoking the "N" word.
It is what is. Maybe our grandchildren can get on the other side of it, but maybe not.
I make sure that I do not preface my remarks with "as a Pole" when criticzing Polish antisemitism, or "as a Jew" when criticizing Jewish stereotypes of Poles as responsible for the Holocaust. I was born in Poland. My father is Polish. My mother was raised in an assimilated Jewsih family in Warsaw, and she survived the Holocaust. When I criticize Polish antisemism and am accused of being bigoted against Poles, that's when I say I was born in Poland and that I lived there for eight months in 1988 and for three months in 1992. When I criticize overly-broad Jewish stereotypes of Poles and am accused of antisemitism, that's when I say my mother was a Holocaust survivor.
Still, my ethnicity is very much secondary to my identity. I regard it as a form of mental illness that is responsible for a high percentage of human conflicts when people identify themselves PRIMARILY as members of a particular ethnic, national, racial, etc. group.
I believe anyone in a society who has had sufficient contact with members of another racial or ethnic group, and who has enough empathy or ability to use their imagination, can understand pretty well what it is like to be a member of a different group. On the other hand, I doubt anyone who has not spent time in a much different society on a different continent, such as with a tribe in the Amazon, is cabable of imagining what it is like to be a member of that group. It' probably possible to imagine to a limited extent with enough self-education.
But there are categories of people whom it is impossible to understand unless you are a member of them. For instance, I survived years of near-pyschotic depression as a result of a brain infection that was exacerbated a thousandfold by incompetent doctors. There is no language availabled to describe what it's like to experience involuntary suicidal ideation every second of the day and night., or to be incapable of speaking much of the time because it causes too much psychic agony, for years without remission.
So I think that in some instances, identifying oneself as a member of a group does signify epistemic knowledge that is unavailable to a meaninful extent to other people. But the experience of that group has to be very far outside the norm of typical human experience.
I have not watched the response yet, but I have always taken it to mean that nobody has a monopoly on what it means to talk as a black man.
You’ve commented previously on how “white people aren’t a people”, and I think you questioned whether black people
could be lumped together as a people. I don’t think you made a conclusion on that, but in no large group do all members exhibit some common traits or tendencies beyond the superficial, so those are correct lines of thinking - that we can generalize but there’ll never be a union of individuals such that one and all could be reliably interchangeable. This conversation should continue over years, then maybe the rules and parameters could be more transparent, and the methodologies could be more consistent.
People tend to object when I say it. I'm white though so maybe that's why...
But still, being white is an experience that people who aren't white don't have. And contrary to the opinion of black racists, white people *do* have valid opinions and 'lived experiences' that others don't share. I think it would be awesome if POC asked white people what it's like trying to navigate a world in which we're at the top and how we handle living in a racist society and what it's like trying to be non-racist, where some refuse to see us as anything but, because they only judge us by the colour of our skin.
It was interesting how a few months ago, a few black women lost their shit at Uber when their DEI consultant gave a few talks on the racism being 'Karenism' and started in with the usual victimy whines about how uncomfortable they felt.
Discomfort, for some of these people, is only for us white devils.
The "as a black man" phrase callout seems somewhat trivial compared to the other issues that plague our society.
Nonetheless, the way I see it, the phrase “as a black man” could be used by well-intentioned individuals to kickstart a dialogue or argument.
Imagine...
- “as a plumber”
- “as a doctor”
- “as an 5-time gold medal winner”
These verbal tools functions similarly to an affirmation question such as, "We're in agreement that I am Black, correct?" This initial affirmation, or 'micro-yes,' is meant to establish a common understanding, which then paves the way for any subsequent statements or questions to be more readily accepted or engaged with.
Honestly, I believe the term is less nefarious than one might assume.
As much as I dislike it, I often preface comments I write in the Times, for instance, with "as a gay man..." because I'm usually about to slam the excesses of gender-queer activism and I need to flash my credentials, or the comment won't be approved. If I need LGBT young ones to dial it back, I'll say "as a gay man of a certain age," which marks me as both a survivor of the "gay plague" as well as a freedom fighter of sorts. It gives me a considerable leg up and automatic respect, in a Rosa Parks sort of way. Those are but two examples of many instances when I need to assert that aspect of my identity .
I noticed a few years ago when a Black friend I went to boarding school with in Italy visited me in LA that her interactions with other Blacks were quite different from mine, something that wasn't there are all when we lived together in New York in our early 20s; I believe it's because there are far more Southern than Yankee Blacks in LA, and that's a completely different dynamic. There was an instant camaraderie, brighter smiles, a sassier lilt in the exchange, which I found endearing and understandable.
This friend and her mother, Deloise — 60s poet, shaved head, blue fingernails tapping her carved Nigerian throne in the living room, raspy laugh, "James, you are a DIZZY child" — dunked and baptized me in New York Blackness when I was a teen. The experience of being the Other at parties they took me to in Harlem was a precious gift, an honor that was also transformative. They immersed me in that wondrous interconnectedness among Blacks as an always-outsider, but it was fine, it was right, there was no problem with it. It was how Vanessa and Deloise would feel if I took them to a Bloody Mary booze-up with my community on the porch of the family's cottage in a summer colony with the shield of the Episcopal Church hanging discretely over the entrance. They would be welcomed, but they would need to be there a long time before they stopped feeling their Otherness. But a working class Irish plumber from South Boston would feel no differently.
I view you both as Black Anglo-American Yankees, as I view Obama; his lockjawed upper-crusty drone is heavier than mine. That is how I would characterize your specific shared ethnicity. It's distinct from Charles Blow's clueless Louisiana-backwater hick; he's no different from his White counterparts in that region. By my estimation, growing up in an all-Black town and attending an HBCU half an hour away meant Blow likely had no significant encounters with Whites until his mid-20s, by which time he was fully indoctrinated in a view of universal White supremacy/privilege/fragility/gazeness that he has rigged by any means necessary to fit White Yankees, like an Ugly Stepsister in 'Cinderella' cutting off her toes to jam that fragile glass slipper on feet that don't deserve it.
As a gay man, I'm allowed to feminize Miss Blow. You aren't.
When Blow says "as a Black man" it's a political stance. When you guys say it, it's infused with a certain Anglo-American Yankee politeness that frames what you're going to say next, sort of like, "In my opinion..." or "My observation is..." You're leaving the discussion open, not dropping a heavy manifesto and crushing it.
Tangentially: After he abused his bully pulpit at the Times yet again and had Pepé Le Pew canceled because he represented "rape culture," my Liberal therapist broke protocol and assessed that Blow was "deranged." His need to make his viewpoint fit is pure cognitive dissonance/distortion.
As a gay man, my experience is that when I meet other gays or lesbians socially, we will also share a nodding, smiling commonality of experience, often with a subtle shift in tone, a bigger smile; if we discount kids trying LGBT on as a fad, we're only ~5% of the population — there's comfort in not being "the only Ghey in the village," to borrow a character from 'Little Britain.' We have a distinctive culture with complex protocols that are as deep as any other social group's. A straight person at a gathering might say something he or she thinks is flattering — "Really? You don't seem gay AT ALL" — and the other gay will look at me, exchange a quick smile, but no eye roll or resentment at the passive "homophobia." It is what it is, and it's certainly not evidence of malice or prejudice, just unfamiliarity with the complexities of our subculture.
Otherness is not only perfectly natural and fine, it's a wonderful thing. I mentioned growing up in Italy; I've spent vast portions of my life as the Other — I love it. I lived in India long enough that I was honored to be the MC of the first televised Miss India Pageant. I would go for months without seeing another White person. If I went to rural areas, they would form a ring around me in train stations, just watching me, unblinking, like I was a curious, exotic creature in a zoo who might surprise and delight them with some trick of the tail. It was weird at first — Indians don't know that in the West it's considered rude to stare — but I grew used to it quickly.
Otherness is the only true diversity in the conversation, not proof of racism or homophobia, or whatever other threat-elevation golem they're molding in critical social justice cabals across America and the Western world. While on the one hand I think we make too much of our differences in America — I rarely support Dr. McWhorter's preoccupation with nuance — I believe that if you speak English as your native language with an American accent you are an Anglo-American of [insert ethnicity] descent. It's something I've been exploring recently in my — yes, sorry, giving myself a plug, AGAIN — newsletter.
Thanks for the platform, Dr. Loury. I hope you'll forgive my shameless prestige borrowing, again. Keep on truckin' — you're exploring necessary things that most others are too terrified to talk about.
James, Thank you for the very eloquent and brave defense of otherness. You stated it more concisely and nuanced than I ever could. Differences are okay. Differences are good. Differences make people interesting. When I ask a question about someone with a different background, ethnicity, or culture, I'm not trying to marginalize them (or heaven forbid I fail to use the most woke nom d'jour -- "denying their right to exist"), rather I'm legitimately trying to understand more about them. Keep up the good work, my friend. To all who say these Substack comments are where the real thought occurs: absolutely concur!
Why the digression attacking Charles Blow? By what authority do you presume to cancel "Miss" Blow's right to identify as a black/gay man? Mr. Blow's op-ed was after the fact of the Dr. Seuss cancellations and only in passing mentioned Pepe Lepew along with other cartoon characters. He quotes James Baldwin. Do you similarly presume to cancel "Miss" Baldwin's black/gay credentials? Did you even read the op-ed? It has a comment section. Seems like that would have been the appropriate place to express your misgivings which are misplaced herein. The sanctimony is breathtaking.
It's not for want of trying to leave comments. Do I know there's a comments section? I believe I mention that in the beginning of my comment here. Comments that didn't blindly support the Robespierre of Wokeism in the aftermath of the post-George Floyd unrest didn't get approved. So I slammed him on Twitter once or twice after the execrable Pepé Le Pew drama, which he very much caused to happen. Get your history straight — it's recent enough that you don't even need presentism to lens it to how you need to read the world.
I took to riffing about him on Facebook as Lady Charlene Blew, So Tired He's In the Past Tense. I rotated his name between the female equivalents of Charles —Charlotte, Carla, Carlotta, Caroline — preceded by a title, followed by "Blew, So Tired He's in the Past Tense" for about a year, until he became irrelevant and no longer the menace to society that he was. Shame he didn't get the guillotine.
Lady Blew does fancy himself the second coming of James Baldwin, although why we need one is anyone's guess. Do we need a second coming of Truman Capote? But Blew is not a good writer, merely a parrot of a Southern Baptists preacher writing in declamatory, bossy paragraphs a sentence long with titles like "You Need to Stop...XYZ." He's the only one who needs to stop.
The entire social justice movement is built on crypto-religious fanatics treating the opinions of fiction writers like Baldwin and De Beauvoir as if they were peer-reviewed sociologists, psychologists and biologists. They're fiction writers.
Baldwin's real chip was the fact he was an ugly gay man who didn't get laid unless he paid for it, like Capote. As is evident from his bonkers, rabidly racist later work, that constant rejection turns you into something called a "bitter old queen," or BOQ+ — I'm adding the plus sign to be inclusive. If Baldwin had a small dick, then he was doubly blighted in a subculture that is based on sex and nothing more, although Darwin knows they've tried to make it more, and more, and more.
So here we are, even more of joke than we were when I was a kid — when at least we were subversive and cool — lorded over by clowns in female blackface fighting for the right to be fully self-expressed by reading fairy tales to children, thereby normalizing misogyny for generations to come through the burlesquing of the most grotesque stereotypes of an entire sex. Like Baldwin, drag queens have a hard time getting laid in Homolandia. If hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned, ain't nothin' compared to what it hath for a female impersonator swiped left on Grindr.
No doubt the NY Times censorship is ridiculous. That said I do get some of my comments past them. Just the other day I told Mr. Blow that if democracy is hanging by a thread he can blame himself for shitting all over Bernie while singing arias in praise of Hillary the only tailor made punching bag Trump could have beaten. Sounds like if anyone is not getting enough sex it's you.
Only recently because I have to have a second hip replacement thanks to a congenital defect inherited from my mother. As a top, I have yet to find a position that doesn't inflame the area. I'm having it next month, after which I'll be back in the saddle.
As a classic BOQ said to me when I was in my mid-30s, "Just wait till you're a daddy." The saying used to be "A gay man dies at 35, and if he's lucky he's reincarnated at 45 as a daddy." I never had that 10-year pause, however; it just accelerrated. Every time I see her my sister says, "You're so lucky," but she's been after my things since we were kids.
I keep waiting for the spigot to turn off, but it doesn't; the daddy fetish runs deep in a community many of whose members' first crushes were their fathers. To top it off, I live in LA, the capitol of shallow when it comes to pulchritude and youth-worship. Doesn't make a difference to me either way, although it might if it were the other way.
I do get more comments approved now by the NY Times than post-June 2020. I don't read Blew and a few others, just as I ignore their counterparts on the alt-right. He's mostly wrong, even more wrong when he doubles down to make himself right and silence opposition. I don't see the point of wasting even five minutes on a predictable, vain, insecure boor, which is how I would characterize Bernie, too.
10 year pause? Is that a punch line? Sorry I'm still doing the math on that one. Good luck with the hip replacement although I suspect you will still be the same BOQ. Hapenis Is Coming.
Which Mean Girl do you identify with? Or is it whichever fits your mood in the morning like a proper gender-fender-bender? Don't forget: On Wednesdays you wear pink!
Do they even let you say "gay man", anymore? Seems like the 'correct' formulation nowadays has to aggregate 'LGBTQ" etc. to signal solidarity with the transgendered. Which may end up being a political miscalculation....
We are no more "LGBT people" than Blacks are "NAACP people." It's a political organization that was set up to advance our rights, then it took on the task of ensuring we have proper medical attention in a sort of "never again" way, and to provide shelter for our runaway youth and neglected elderly. You aren't obliged to pay homage to gender-queerism by using the Q, formerly a pejorative as bad as 'fag/faggot,' but now it's yet another banal radical statement symbolizing "inclusivity," superfluous concept in today's America, but them rebels without a cause... Just making shit up as they pass the talking stick. The excesses Gender-queer activism have splintered the OG LGBT into the LGB Alliance, who are "TQ+ exclusionary," and the alphabet goop. I'd just as well we go back to 'faggot' — I was disappointed when we stopped using it. It was so much more honest.
Thank you for the insight. It does seem to me that "LGBTQ etc." has become a mandatory trope for 'gay', as if it were a requirement of the NY Times style manual. A problem with this broadly inclusive labeling is that it brings identity politics to bear where some of the included don't want it to be. Until 1979, Harry Hay and NAMBLA marched in the gay pride parades around here. I'm pretty sure that the LGBTQ+ identity monitors don't want to be THAT 'inclusive' any more.....
Thank again!
Race matters....when Glenn decides it does.
If I gave my opinion publicly about some matter of race or culture, and prefaced my remarks with “ as a white man...”. I suspect I would be branded a white supremacist almost immediately. Anyone watching John and Glenn can already see that they’re black. The statement serves only to add heft to what would surely be an otherwise specious statement. I’m not a fan.
Believing that you would be labeled "a white supremacist" for prefacing your remarks with "as a white man", without laboring to help the reader/listener understand and consider the context of use, assess the individuals involved, and the subject under discussion, seems like an reactionary exaggeration on your part - a world-building fiction, a straw man fallacy or at minimum, a projection of your own making - all due respect. Because If that indeed would ever happen, it’s unfair and not right. Who would ever do that of good intentions?
More a rhetorical device. Would never do it obviously. I hate straw men too. My point is that arguments should be built on argument not sentiment. I do take your point in good faith.
Thanks Chris.
What you say makes me think! On the one hand, just because you might be (unfairly) labeled is insufficient reason to conclude that the phrase is useless. Maybe the labeling is incorrect? On the other hand, I use similar terms specifically because of the epistemic authority derived from them, particularly if that "authority" is not obvious. For example, I might say, "As a runner I find that taking NSAIDS is not helpful." You might not know I am a runner, and so, the preface could be helpful. You could see that I am black, so maybe not so much. Excellent point. However, these podcasts and conversations happen across media, so someone listening only might not have the benefit of seeing that they are obviously black. Might make a difference?
As Professor John McWhorter will tell you, some languages have epistemic markers built in. However, English is not such a language. Accordingly, your epistemic marker has the appearance of authority proclamation ex cathedra. Which brings us back to the previous poster's argument about the appearance of racism and racial supremacism...
Before we go on, can you give me an example of an epistemic marker? My attempts to consult the Oracle (Google) proved less than satisfying.
I should really defer to John McW, but he's such a busy guy.
I think the linguists will use the terms "evidentiality" or "epistemic modality".
Here's an example from Pomo, a native language from where I live in Northern California:
Evidentials in Eastern Pomo (McLendon 2003)
Evidential type Example verb Gloss
nonvisual sensory pʰa·békʰ-ink’e "burned"
[speaker felt the sensation]
inferential pʰa·bék-ine "must have burned"
[speaker saw circumstantial evidence]
hearsay (reportative) pʰa·békʰ-·le "burned, they say"
[speaker is reporting what was told]
direct knowledge pʰa·bék-a "burned"
[speaker has direct evidence, probably visual]
Here's a link to a wikipedia discussion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality
I asked the question precisely for this type of insight! The level of discourse on Substack is wonderful. Thanks!
[One other point, added via edit. My goal, with the epistemic marker I "forced into" the conversation is precisely to provide authority ex cathedra. I do not think that is a bad thing, IFF that authority is legitimate. I think being black *might* supply some authority, albeit not necessarily at any cost, implied or otherwise, to someone without that authority. Similarly, for a plumber or a runner. Now, and this is important, that supposedly derived authority could be bogus. For example, a runner might have an opinion about a running subject and be wrong! The context supplied is still helpful, one would hope.]
As has become my habit, I posted this comment to the Youtube channel as well...
It seems to me that John asserted, with some persuasive logic, that the phrase, "as a Black man" does, in fact, provide a type of epistemic authority. To Glenn's point, it is only that this knowledge does not invalidate other knowledge, regardless of how gained. Every opinion has a nexus. If I have an opinion borne of my "black experience" so what? I can still relish and/or more highly value and/or vigorously promote an epistemic basis that includes more than just my blackness. Hopefully, that made some sense!
The Wiltster, great comment.
Thomas Sowell wrote about the shifting cultural norms, the "white southerners" vs. Blacks almost switching perceived roles in society, among other groups. If there truly is "heft," in the term does it indicate a shift in the societal sway/power dynamic of Black folks, at least in the West, from your perspective? Basically, is the term more powerful today than years gone by?
“As a black man...” feels different in that context, especially if used with intention.
Damn, Michael Henry, I will have to think about that more. I do not think the "heft" of the term is different. I think the perception of the speaker who utters it is what is key. BTW, I appreciate your kind words! Sowell's treatise on "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" raised some fascinating questions about the history and shifting cultural norms of which you speak.
Yeah the subject got me thinking...when Glenn and John introduced the subject, I didn't anticipate the mixed reaction it garnered. Folks come out the woodwork with comments expressing counterpoint grievances like I never heard raised before, a soft appeal- it caught me off-guard. Now I want to think about this, why did this happen...
I know everyone disses Bill Cosby these days but eons ago, Mr. Cosby recorded a comedy routine about the vulnerability that black Americans face because of the potential that any white person --including friends-- can instantly racialize the relationship, by simply invoking the "N" word.
It is what is. Maybe our grandchildren can get on the other side of it, but maybe not.