Amen. Sorry to have to say this, since the New Glenn has been my #1 hero in the past two years, and has kept me centered in the Real World, where 2 + 2 = 4, always, eternally, as opposed to some “anti-racist” sum required by “ethnomathematics”, but if it were a debate, the Old Glenn, who has FIRE in his belly, pretty much obliterated, scorched, the New Glenn, who appears happier, more relaxed, content in his old age, which is a good thing (I know—I’m in Glenn’s age cohort), but it won’t win any new supporters to his cause. Where is the man whose rants against “professional Blacks” are so breathtakingly eloquent and electrifying? Seems to me that this is no longer about race—it’s about CULTURE. Racism may have caused the evolution of a culture not best adapted to 21st century flourishing, but it’s the values of the culture that need to change, and there’s nothing that virtue-signaling white people and DEI seminars can do about that. As the New Glenn (and the Woodson Center, to which I’m also contributor) would probably say, “The ball is in your court”, or as Jason Riley says in the title of his book, “Please Stop Helping Us.”
Stephen, I agree in the main with you -- and my message to which you reply. I do think the Old Glenn poses a challenge still valid in certain ways. That is, racism may no longer explain the culturally shaped dysfunction in many African American communities and the resulting disparities. However, perhaps it is important for the morale of these communities that they get all of us to acknowledge that the origin of these conditions does lie in historically long-sustained racist denigration. As a Jew growing up in America in the 1950s, I would never have been allowed to use anti-Semitism as an excuse for anything. My parents would have said "get upstairs and get to your homework." Yet you can be sure we also were made to know in detail how they'd picked on us, the Cossacks, the Nazis, you name it. And to never forget it. So, I can understand how a sense of outrage over past racism itself could be essential to generating the pride and determination needed to grasp one's own future instead of just a pretext for blame and reparations and guilt tripping.
Amen. Sorry to have to say this, since the New Glenn has been my #1 hero in the past two years, and has kept me centered in the Real World, where 2 + 2 = 4, always, eternally, as opposed to some “anti-racist” sum required by “ethnomathematics”, but if it were a debate, the Old Glenn, who has FIRE in his belly, pretty much obliterated, scorched, the New Glenn, who appears happier, more relaxed, content in his old age, which is a good thing (I know—I’m in Glenn’s age cohort), but it won’t win any new supporters to his cause. Where is the man whose rants against “professional Blacks” are so breathtakingly eloquent and electrifying? Seems to me that this is no longer about race—it’s about CULTURE. Racism may have caused the evolution of a culture not best adapted to 21st century flourishing, but it’s the values of the culture that need to change, and there’s nothing that virtue-signaling white people and DEI seminars can do about that. As the New Glenn (and the Woodson Center, to which I’m also contributor) would probably say, “The ball is in your court”, or as Jason Riley says in the title of his book, “Please Stop Helping Us.”
Stephen, I agree in the main with you -- and my message to which you reply. I do think the Old Glenn poses a challenge still valid in certain ways. That is, racism may no longer explain the culturally shaped dysfunction in many African American communities and the resulting disparities. However, perhaps it is important for the morale of these communities that they get all of us to acknowledge that the origin of these conditions does lie in historically long-sustained racist denigration. As a Jew growing up in America in the 1950s, I would never have been allowed to use anti-Semitism as an excuse for anything. My parents would have said "get upstairs and get to your homework." Yet you can be sure we also were made to know in detail how they'd picked on us, the Cossacks, the Nazis, you name it. And to never forget it. So, I can understand how a sense of outrage over past racism itself could be essential to generating the pride and determination needed to grasp one's own future instead of just a pretext for blame and reparations and guilt tripping.