I want to thank John McWhorter whose video image or physical body recently visited the SF Commonwealth club. This is important because in SF my closest friends of decades mischaracterize me as uninformed because my story does not match the words of TV news.
I want to share with John a linguistics problem caused by misuse at an early age. John is probably already aware of such problem. A nephew aged 8, 9 and 10 would- during 1995 “read aloud” in my living room by mentally recalling a similarly spelled word that his eyes had previously photographed for his cerebral database. “Cerebral” would become “cereal”. Mentally sounding each letter that comprises a word, was in his opinion torturous and too slow a process.
We need a broad based discussion on human nature. Is "original sin" peculiar to one race (white) or to all?
Also on our common ancestry.
Also, if we descend from common ancestors with all people being at least 50th cousins, do we not ALL carry the DNA of saints and sinners and oppressors and the oppressed?
Has not every society alive (including tribal and/or indigenous ones) taken land from others, redrawn boundaries, and supplanted those earlier "norms" with their own.
I descend from Edward I (Longshanks and oppressor of the Scots. So do Barack Obama and and Meghan Markle and neither from ancestors who were enslaved. (If from Edward I then Charlemagne with an ancestry that likely includes some form of "slavery" as in Italy or by the Vikings at some point.)
Kendri is way too simplistic.
Will all these forms of "slavery" be allowed in classroom discussions in CRT? Or is the curriculum scripted so much so that the voices of Lowery or McWhorter would not be allowed?
"Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past – such as Shakespeare – are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to b backward. The classics ar declared backward and ignorant of the importance o gender or race.
In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Countering act of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism.
The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.
I specifically asked my colleagues to find the following quote from Martin Luther King:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where the will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.”
This is the true value. However, things are turning out differently there. By the way, the absolute majority of Russian people do not think that the colour of a person’s skin or their gender is an important matter. Each of us is a human being. This is what matters. In a number of Western countries, the debate over men’s and women’s rights has turned into a perfect phantasmagoria. Look, beware of going where the Bolsheviks once planned to go – not only communalising chickens, but also communalising women. One more step and you will be there.”
Suggestion: It’s worth reading the garrolous Mr. Putin.
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
-W.B. Yeats
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
I encountered the same what would you do to encourage diversity question in my job search a few times and I have nothing to do with academia. I am in supply chain, looking for a regular desk job. I skipped those job applications automatically. Also, surprisingly, I was asked for my pronoun twice or three times on applications. On one of them disclosing your pronoun was a requirement (*) in order to submit the application.
I would love to hear Glenn and John discuss the Rittenhouse and Arbery cases. I wanted to add regarding the Systemic Racism's Greatest Hits episode, that Simone and Omar have very likely drunk the koolaid and have many unreasonable supporters, sadly. They are not interested in listening, only reacting and shutting other down.
Back in 2008, Ron Paul ran on ending the Fed, something his strategists and other "experts" thought was too esoteric and uninteresting for anyone to care about. They were wrong and it took the media and the Republican establishment machine to disrupt his candidacy.
The lesson? Don't assume you know what will resonate with the people.
Possibly the tone in this article is too high-level, too abstract. It could verge on hand-wringing, on saying, "Come on, nonracist white people, fight your fights, stand up against the academic abusers who are trying to make you serve their ideology."
Possibly a more effective tone would be lower-level. Like, address the literature in a specific dispute. Find a psychosocial, or economic, or legal, or some other debate, and highlight where you think it goes off the rails, racially speaking.
I can offer a few examples from my blogging. These may be the kinds of writings that academics -- alleged knowledge-seekers -- avoid for political reasons.
A very good read. Excellent. I do not know if you're familiar with my denominational (PCA) colleague, and fellow seminarian Anthony Bradley. He's done outstanding work in this field, and in the ministerial world that he and I inhabit, he understands, it seems, how to walk that fine line while simultaneously speaking truth to Southern Presbyterian power. I admire him, but do not envy his task. https://www.dranthonybradley.com
I cannot thank-you enough for speaking truth to power and persevering what I can only imagine is a lot of animosity and maybe even some self doubt. Every time I read your works I am enlightened and emboldened to be more understanding and courageous in the tru spirit of equality of spirit and value.
Some good thoughts here, thanks. Another reason it can be hard to engage on these topics with the woke racialists is they will frequently take up positions that are absurd and contradictory. You can't call them on it, that's "privilege", so you're stuck with nothing to talk about, really.
I'm just wondering if he realized that the Southern Manifesto was signed by almost all Democrats. A similar group of people who were behind the civil rights movement. So .... there's that.
Mr. Loury and Mr. McWhorter are, first and foremost, black. Not American black, but black American. They are (by dint of birth) black and always will be. They will aways look at life through the eyes of a black man. And they are and will for the foreseeable future be minorities of minority:Educated, erudite males without any (open and notorious) of the habits which serve to disqualify so many of their cohort from success in polite (wider) society. McWhorter and Loury might not eat any better if they were white, but they would have less angst.
And when push comes to shove, both these men are going to defend black. That is just the way it shakes out. They really don't have much choice. There is lots of room made for whites that trash whites, but none for blacks that trash blacks, None at all. Loury and McWhorter both know what a fine line they tread as they try to put the racial camel through the eye of the popular needle.
Nice guys both. Decent men. Unimportant except to their friends and family. Of no import at all on the salient issues of the day.
You guys are too fancy for the Deplorables. All we really understand about Kendi and his peers is that he's an anti-white racist and America hating treasonous ghettotrash.
Here's another reason for you to keep talking: too much of the race talk in America is not productive, does not help people. The middle you're inhabiting is between "burn it down" and "everything's fine". What are productive ways for the country to grow, for people to love each other more, for cultural identity to be respected and not pandered to?
Juneteenth was a great missed opportunity: this wonderful holiday springing naturally out of African American culture, not imposed, has celebrated the arrival of the Union Army, under the Stars and Stripes, a symbol of freedom to the enslaved. Whatever awful missteps the country makes, we can never lose sight of that. And by making Juneteenth a national holiday practically without discussion, with no symbolism, diminished its proper impact, its natural role. It's calling the country to its highest vocation: freedom and unlocking human potential and happiness.
I would like to see you address tribalism in general.
https://charlesekokotu.substack.com/p/americas-race-problem-is-tribalism
Is a place to start.
I want to thank John McWhorter whose video image or physical body recently visited the SF Commonwealth club. This is important because in SF my closest friends of decades mischaracterize me as uninformed because my story does not match the words of TV news.
I want to share with John a linguistics problem caused by misuse at an early age. John is probably already aware of such problem. A nephew aged 8, 9 and 10 would- during 1995 “read aloud” in my living room by mentally recalling a similarly spelled word that his eyes had previously photographed for his cerebral database. “Cerebral” would become “cereal”. Mentally sounding each letter that comprises a word, was in his opinion torturous and too slow a process.
We need a broad based discussion on human nature. Is "original sin" peculiar to one race (white) or to all?
Also on our common ancestry.
Also, if we descend from common ancestors with all people being at least 50th cousins, do we not ALL carry the DNA of saints and sinners and oppressors and the oppressed?
Has not every society alive (including tribal and/or indigenous ones) taken land from others, redrawn boundaries, and supplanted those earlier "norms" with their own.
I descend from Edward I (Longshanks and oppressor of the Scots. So do Barack Obama and and Meghan Markle and neither from ancestors who were enslaved. (If from Edward I then Charlemagne with an ancestry that likely includes some form of "slavery" as in Italy or by the Vikings at some point.)
Kendri is way too simplistic.
Will all these forms of "slavery" be allowed in classroom discussions in CRT? Or is the curriculum scripted so much so that the voices of Lowery or McWhorter would not be allowed?
What a contrast with our president.
Putin:
"Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past – such as Shakespeare – are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to b backward. The classics ar declared backward and ignorant of the importance o gender or race.
In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Countering act of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism.
The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.
I specifically asked my colleagues to find the following quote from Martin Luther King:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where the will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.”
This is the true value. However, things are turning out differently there. By the way, the absolute majority of Russian people do not think that the colour of a person’s skin or their gender is an important matter. Each of us is a human being. This is what matters. In a number of Western countries, the debate over men’s and women’s rights has turned into a perfect phantasmagoria. Look, beware of going where the Bolsheviks once planned to go – not only communalising chickens, but also communalising women. One more step and you will be there.”
Suggestion: It’s worth reading the garrolous Mr. Putin.
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
-W.B. Yeats
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
-Mark Twain
I encountered the same what would you do to encourage diversity question in my job search a few times and I have nothing to do with academia. I am in supply chain, looking for a regular desk job. I skipped those job applications automatically. Also, surprisingly, I was asked for my pronoun twice or three times on applications. On one of them disclosing your pronoun was a requirement (*) in order to submit the application.
I would love to hear Glenn and John discuss the Rittenhouse and Arbery cases. I wanted to add regarding the Systemic Racism's Greatest Hits episode, that Simone and Omar have very likely drunk the koolaid and have many unreasonable supporters, sadly. They are not interested in listening, only reacting and shutting other down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlbie_Vo974&t=198s
Back in 2008, Ron Paul ran on ending the Fed, something his strategists and other "experts" thought was too esoteric and uninteresting for anyone to care about. They were wrong and it took the media and the Republican establishment machine to disrupt his candidacy.
The lesson? Don't assume you know what will resonate with the people.
Possibly the tone in this article is too high-level, too abstract. It could verge on hand-wringing, on saying, "Come on, nonracist white people, fight your fights, stand up against the academic abusers who are trying to make you serve their ideology."
Possibly a more effective tone would be lower-level. Like, address the literature in a specific dispute. Find a psychosocial, or economic, or legal, or some other debate, and highlight where you think it goes off the rails, racially speaking.
I can offer a few examples from my blogging. These may be the kinds of writings that academics -- alleged knowledge-seekers -- avoid for political reasons.
An Example of Racist Research
https://sweduc.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/racist-research/#Clarify
Writing Coach for Ta-Nehisi Coates
https://thefailedsystem.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/helping-coates-write/
Failure in the American System: The Civil War, Slavery, and Cliven Bundy
https://thefailedsystem.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/civil-war/
A very good read. Excellent. I do not know if you're familiar with my denominational (PCA) colleague, and fellow seminarian Anthony Bradley. He's done outstanding work in this field, and in the ministerial world that he and I inhabit, he understands, it seems, how to walk that fine line while simultaneously speaking truth to Southern Presbyterian power. I admire him, but do not envy his task. https://www.dranthonybradley.com
I cannot thank-you enough for speaking truth to power and persevering what I can only imagine is a lot of animosity and maybe even some self doubt. Every time I read your works I am enlightened and emboldened to be more understanding and courageous in the tru spirit of equality of spirit and value.
Some good thoughts here, thanks. Another reason it can be hard to engage on these topics with the woke racialists is they will frequently take up positions that are absurd and contradictory. You can't call them on it, that's "privilege", so you're stuck with nothing to talk about, really.
It's not my fault black people don't like the color of their skin.
I'm just wondering if he realized that the Southern Manifesto was signed by almost all Democrats. A similar group of people who were behind the civil rights movement. So .... there's that.
Mr. Loury and Mr. McWhorter are, first and foremost, black. Not American black, but black American. They are (by dint of birth) black and always will be. They will aways look at life through the eyes of a black man. And they are and will for the foreseeable future be minorities of minority:Educated, erudite males without any (open and notorious) of the habits which serve to disqualify so many of their cohort from success in polite (wider) society. McWhorter and Loury might not eat any better if they were white, but they would have less angst.
And when push comes to shove, both these men are going to defend black. That is just the way it shakes out. They really don't have much choice. There is lots of room made for whites that trash whites, but none for blacks that trash blacks, None at all. Loury and McWhorter both know what a fine line they tread as they try to put the racial camel through the eye of the popular needle.
Nice guys both. Decent men. Unimportant except to their friends and family. Of no import at all on the salient issues of the day.
You guys are too fancy for the Deplorables. All we really understand about Kendi and his peers is that he's an anti-white racist and America hating treasonous ghettotrash.
Here's another reason for you to keep talking: too much of the race talk in America is not productive, does not help people. The middle you're inhabiting is between "burn it down" and "everything's fine". What are productive ways for the country to grow, for people to love each other more, for cultural identity to be respected and not pandered to?
Juneteenth was a great missed opportunity: this wonderful holiday springing naturally out of African American culture, not imposed, has celebrated the arrival of the Union Army, under the Stars and Stripes, a symbol of freedom to the enslaved. Whatever awful missteps the country makes, we can never lose sight of that. And by making Juneteenth a national holiday practically without discussion, with no symbolism, diminished its proper impact, its natural role. It's calling the country to its highest vocation: freedom and unlocking human potential and happiness.
My faith in humanity may have been restored. Thanks. Love you both.