Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
John McWhorter – Who You Calling a Sellout?
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John McWhorter – Who You Calling a Sellout?

Due to some health and scheduling issues, John and I had to delay recording. We weren’t able to get together until this morning, so many apologies for posting this week’s episode late. The upside is that you now have the freshest possible Glenn and John content—piping hot, straight out of the oven. And we are taking up at least one very hot topic: selling out. I’ve been accused of it, John’s been accused of it. But what does it really mean?

Before we get to that, we discuss how Wikipedia has been a little unfair to John. But we’re both quite happy that, when someone asked ChatGPT to name the most important African American intellectuals, John and I ranked pretty high. Maybe AI isn’t so bad after all! John criticizes JD Vance for, as he sees it, knowingly exaggerating and disseminating false information about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. He thinks Vance really has sold out. But, as we both see it, true sellouts—people who say things they don’t really believe in order to cash in—are rare. For as much as John and I get accused of that, neither of us has done it, and neither has any reputable black conservative we know. We toss around another text for our little book club, and that leads me to offer a remembrance of my late wife, Linda Datcher Loury. We then move onto parenthood. We both take much joy in our children, but should parenthood be the norm? Some people, John says, just aren’t cut out for it. And finally, John offers a—to me—nerve-rattling peek into his writing process.

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1:28 John corrects some Wikipedia-driven misconceptions about his work

4:12 ChatGPT pays homage to Glenn and John

6:41 John: JD Vance actually is what I’m merely accused of being

17:59 Ground News ad

20:08 Are there any true sellouts among black conservatives?

28:32 And what is a sellout, anyway?

36:01 What goes on between Clarence and Ginni Thomas?

40:19 An addition to the book club reading list

42:08 ACTA ad 43:54 Remembering Linda Datcher Loury

49:00 Should having children be the norm?

56:34 Glenn sightings in the wild

57:32 Working without a net

Recorded September 23, 2024


Links and Readings

Glenn’s Wikipedia page

John’s Wikipedia page

John’s NYT column, “Why JD Vance Dropped into My Inbox”

JD Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

John’s book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

Randall Kennedy’s book, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal

David Greenberg’s forthcoming book, John Lewis: A Life

David Lodge’s novel, Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses

Barbara and Karen Fields’s book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

Percival Everett’s novel, James

RF Kuang’s novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence

Clint Smith’s Atlantic piece, “George Floyd Was Also a Father”


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Glenn Loury
The Glenn Show
Race, inequality, and economics in the US and throughout the world from Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics at Brown University and Paulson Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute