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.
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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.