I grew up in a predominantly white, Republican, Christian small city in California. Besides my brothers and my dad ( my mom has primarily European descent; aka she is white), I had no real significant exposure to other people with African-American descent until like 2nd grade, and that was a girl who sat across me in class who another kid next to us suggested we should date because we were both black; which I thought just profoundly stupid -- I hadn't cognitively recognized racism yet. That one incident of very light racism(perhaps a bit too strong of a word for what it was) was my only experience of it while in elementary school, even though I was typically one of the few black kids in a grade. I did well in elementary school and teachers were generally very supportive and expressed their appreciation of my behavior to my parents.
It wasn't until middle school, and moreso highschool, that I was exposed to what Glenn and John refer to the "badass motherfucker" culture, or what Sowell refers to as Redneck culture, that is found among many black people(and as mentioned, people of other races as well) -- and I absolutely did not fit in with them. I was comfortably independent and quite happy being peculiarly me that the occasional scornful look of some black people when I expressed indifference to the signs of their cultural status indicators were as irrelevant as the look of disappointment from Christians who discovered I thought Jesus was a crazy person or the pathetic attempts at some kids--of every race--who ridiculed me for "being white in the inside" for doing well academically or for having my unique speech patterns or demeanor. I was never part of any "black community" and the culture I exhibited was a combination of whatever kept my parents happy, whatever appealed to my natural sense of virtue, and whatever the peers whose company I enjoyed thought was "cool." Unfortunately that did lead me to make a few foolish decisions, like reject an offer to join the Mathletes in 7th grade and an oversized desire to play football in 9th grade, which led to a concussion. "Black culture" nonetheless, was irrelevant to me when it came to my personal identity, and it still is today. I actually find it obnoxious and consider it racist the notion that a person with a particular racial heritage ought to have particular culture; thus whether if a white person or a black person thinks I am "inauthentic" because of my chosen culture I consider that person authentically racist and stupid.
By the time I was in college I viewed racial tribalism as a disgrace. Unlike Obama, who also grew up outside an epicenter of black people, I had no desire to find acceptance into the "black community". I think the notion of such a community is ridiculous; there are certainly black communities--that is communities that are composed of mostly black people; but some notion of a monolithic black community with some sort of innate culture is Platonic idealism of the racist sort. And I'm not particularly interested in being accepted by people who think that I ought to have greater allegiance or concern for people or an appreciation of their culture because they share a skin pigmentation with me or share racial heritage with me. That is stupid as fuk. There were times when I'd have been more empathetic and sympathetic toward people who did feel that way; but those times have long past, and now it is just embarrassing at the least. My "people" are the people who love and respect me, and who I love and respect, and their race is absolutely irrelevant. Black people, or white people, or any other people who don't respect that can kick rocks.
While I do feel compelled these days to speak out as a black person that isn't a Marxist who thinks white Americans are born with original sin and owe a debt to the descendants of black slaves, I do not feel that I am in any special way in a position to most effectively communicate with black people who still feel that black people ought to be racially tribalized. It would be neat if one reads something I write or hears something I say and begins to question some of the culture that they have internalized, but I have a suspicion that those most deeply engaged in the "badass motherfucker" culture are incapable of even giving my words a semi-fair trial in their brains, and like most who I have come across, will dismiss me as a coon and promise to themselves they will physically attack me if I ever express my mind in their neighborhoods (as has been expressed to me in the past).
No, I expect that more will actually come from non-black "liberals" who realize that supporting the most degenerate culture held by some black people will actually not be the best thing for most black people and from other black people in areas with a large black demographic who are already feeling the inkling that their local black thugs and wannabe-thugs who do stupid thuggish shit that get themselves killed or horribly harmed are not worth marching in the streets about under the banner of expressing resistance to White Supremacy -- maybe people will begin to see that there is a grand distinction between Jacob Blake and John Crawford III, or Emmit Till and Michael Brown. Maybe they will recognize the possibility that racism may have had little to do with the death of George Floyd, even if it was murder.
Baby steps. And then maybe one day some people will realize how absurd their strong loyalty to the Democratic Party is when statues of Robert E. Lee simultaneously deeply upsets them. And then perhaps Democrats will demand the Democratic Party finally pay reparations to the descendants of black slaves for the war they fought to maintain it, the reparations they stole that were given to freed black people after the civil war, and the terrorism that they nursed in the form of the KKK, black laws, and Jim Crow for 100 years after they lost that war, rather than trying to scapegoat their responsibility onto the American people in general or the Republican Party. Perhaps that is an unrealistic dream. We will probably sooner see the Democratic Party collapse than see it redeem itself. I'd be fine with either outcome; and if the Republican Party collapses too for altogether other reasons, I'd be be okay with that as well.
Anyway, I look forward to reading your autobiography Glenn; from your short revelation about your time in the 80s, it sounds like it will be interesting and insightful. And from the limited time I've known of you, I've found your views to be very refreshing.
Glenn, John, keep up the good work! Keep the faith. It's so slow because ... of too many reasons to list them all. But the single most important one is well known. Promiscuity.
Systemic promiscuity is the social problem.
Like so many Boomers, I used to believe in "responsible promiscuity", two consenting adults, everything sexual is OK, how can it be bad when it feels so good? ?? Nope. BS. BS on "responsible promiscuity". Even "serial monogamy" is sub-optimal. (Atheists should replace "moral" with "optimal")
Let's talk about sex (baby, let's talk about you and me...)
We should be makin' love.
Love = sexual lust PLUS commitment. The lust is the feeling. The commitment requires will power, and daily decisions to focus inevitable sexual urges onto a spouse, not objectifying the next "fine piece of a**" one sees. Even tho it's not easy.
70%+ Black kids, not growing up with the bio-fathers married to their mothers (Whites about 30% now).
Systemic Promiscuity is the biggest, and non-racist, problem. Also not easy to solve, but focusing on being super anti-racist will only be a distraction.
You blow up your own point of view when you say that Daunte Wright & Ahmaud Arbery should have just taken what was coming to them. What was coming for them came for them regardless of their resistance. Police officers should not be murdering anyone for any reason, including: 'i feared for my life'. Don't take the job then. And Arbery - too many loose guns in the hands of loose cannons. The entire culture around guns and policing and 'the right to bear arms' - that has to change. Tribalism won't change. But let's change the acceptance of casual use of guns.
Robert, you're wrong. Bad violent criminals can ONLY be stopped by people willing to be MORE violent. Police win the shootouts. The reform needed is not "arrest resistance" , but to have more monitors on the police, quicker ways to get rid of the few bad apple police, and get more Black men able and willing to be Police officers. For their neighborhoods.
Police are killing fewer than ever (have you even seen the statistics, real data?), but the number of homicides is going up. Especially Blacks killing Blacks.
Looking forward to Dr. Loury's memoir. Interesting when Dr. McWhorter points out that this idealizing of "badass motherfucker" has been a part of other American ethnic communities and not just the Black community. I think it's a very American identity. (D.H. Lawrence: "“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."). There's a romantic yearning in American masculinity to be that badass motherfucker no matter which side of the law you're on, and no matter your race. I'm not qualified by experience or study to say whether it is a special problem in the Black community, but the life experience of Dr. Loury certainly seems to attest to that. Whatever the case, these mythologies make us feel alive, but in the end do more harm than good. Perhaps part of the solution is not to argue against it as much as to find other mythologies that can make us feel alive, but without the nihilistic edge.
I am really missing MLK, the content of their character, etc....there was a moment when we were beginning to just see people for who they are and not for the color of their skin. Now skin color is all the rage. Go figure.
Let me start by saying, despite a wonderful education at a historically-white, "Ivory" League--as opposed to Ivy League--institution, I had somehow missed out on the monumentally thought-provoking musings of you two badass motherfuckers, until very recently. I like to consider myself a reasonably well-traveled, well-educated, well-exposed Black man! So for me, it is a big win, to find you, even later in life. As to the continuing scam of identity politics and antiracism, I share the frustration that Professor McWhorter noted. At the same time, maybe the fact that you guys *are* being heard, and therefore mentally/emotionally disseminated to audiences--like my friends--that would otherwise ignore you, is a net positive. Is it fast enough? Is it deep enough? Damned if I know. Just glad to hear you spout off, and hoping you will not stop.
"You can see that in the history of many people, including the Irish, including Italians. You can see it in people other than Black people today."
I actually choked up a little reading this. It's very, very much a problem in Italian-American culture. We were cut off from our roots by the Immigration Act of 1924 (aimed at reducing the number of Jews and Italians, especially from the South), and in place of our real culture and language, we got handed mobster stereotypes, goombahs, and Godfather movies.
And we actually honest-to-Gawd ate it up, and it sickens me.
I think this is part of why the trust-fund wokeists are so anxious to make sure that working-class ethnic Americans and Black Americans never sit down and connect, really talk about what we've been through. Because once we do, once we see that our problems can be better understood by the parallax that comes from having experienced them in slightly (or severely) different ways, we can make real headway on them.
But we can't talk like this, not really. Some trust-fund college brat will always sail in and yell, "SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT YOU HAD IT JUST AS BAD AS SLAVES DID?!" and I'm like, "Well no, that's not what I'm saying, but okay, let's follow that completely new idea that you only just introduced right now ... "
The point is, we didn't have it Just As Bad. We had it bad, but differently. And if we could get the trust-fund brats to STFU and get out of the room, we could really connect and understand ourselves and one another so much better.
Anyhow, yes. I agree with you both. I can see easily how it is a cultural thing, because it is with my people as well. And it takes each person recognizing that these idiot stereotypes are sold to us because we were cut off from our real roots, and that they were not created with our best interests in mind.
Dickens wrote about the dance halls and taverns in New York that were full of Black and Irish dock workers, whores, drunks, gamblers. All in the same place, boozing, dancing and fighting with each other.
Good comment. 'Trust fund wokeists' - yes / but also it's the attitude that permeates; it's not just those with access to money...it's the illusion of that whole strata; most of that strata doesn't have that money, but has been trained by 'education' to speak in those terms. Instead of money, they have relatively serviceable debt AKA lifelong debt servitude. But it's enough that the first 15 years or so, it seems manageable. Debt = addiction = ability to be manipulated; and it's on both 'sides' of the question; right wing, left wing; vomiting up whatever rhetoric gets programmed, but the underlying foundation = in financial thrall to debt collecting institutions. No time to learn to think as adults; easier to grab onto identity howling then.
I’m a white millennial progressive and you guys have dramatically changed my thinking on race issues over the past year or so. I was already skeptical of a lot of the woke bullshit but you’ve helped crystallize that instinctive aversion into a more cohesive opposition to and understanding of the Elects worldview. Several of my demographically similar friends, some of whom I’ve introduced to you guys, have had similar experiences. It’s just a drop in the bucket anecdote I know but as someone who generally inhabits the wokest of woke “spaces” - I’m a grad student at a major North Eastern university - I can sense it shifting amongst a lot of my peers. More and more of them are questioning the orthodox narratives on a lot of these issues even if just in little ways. It always seems like nothing is budging in the social zeitgeist until suddenly everything shifts dramatically. I do believe a change is coming. All of which just to say keep up the good work and don’t get too discouraged, though I’m sure I would be too if I were you.
John please be patient! You and Glenn are being heard, and it is helping, immensely. I think it's possible that the woke antiracist stuff will hit rock bottom in the next year or so, because it's so simplistic and they have to lie all the time to prop itself up. I think more and more people will start to see through it, get tired of all the nonsense (and worse) in their schools and workplaces. I think it will crash, and we'll go back to something closer to normal liberalism. Maybe. I hope. Anyway - you are helping many of us stay sane, so thank you for that!
I grew up in a predominantly white, Republican, Christian small city in California. Besides my brothers and my dad ( my mom has primarily European descent; aka she is white), I had no real significant exposure to other people with African-American descent until like 2nd grade, and that was a girl who sat across me in class who another kid next to us suggested we should date because we were both black; which I thought just profoundly stupid -- I hadn't cognitively recognized racism yet. That one incident of very light racism(perhaps a bit too strong of a word for what it was) was my only experience of it while in elementary school, even though I was typically one of the few black kids in a grade. I did well in elementary school and teachers were generally very supportive and expressed their appreciation of my behavior to my parents.
It wasn't until middle school, and moreso highschool, that I was exposed to what Glenn and John refer to the "badass motherfucker" culture, or what Sowell refers to as Redneck culture, that is found among many black people(and as mentioned, people of other races as well) -- and I absolutely did not fit in with them. I was comfortably independent and quite happy being peculiarly me that the occasional scornful look of some black people when I expressed indifference to the signs of their cultural status indicators were as irrelevant as the look of disappointment from Christians who discovered I thought Jesus was a crazy person or the pathetic attempts at some kids--of every race--who ridiculed me for "being white in the inside" for doing well academically or for having my unique speech patterns or demeanor. I was never part of any "black community" and the culture I exhibited was a combination of whatever kept my parents happy, whatever appealed to my natural sense of virtue, and whatever the peers whose company I enjoyed thought was "cool." Unfortunately that did lead me to make a few foolish decisions, like reject an offer to join the Mathletes in 7th grade and an oversized desire to play football in 9th grade, which led to a concussion. "Black culture" nonetheless, was irrelevant to me when it came to my personal identity, and it still is today. I actually find it obnoxious and consider it racist the notion that a person with a particular racial heritage ought to have particular culture; thus whether if a white person or a black person thinks I am "inauthentic" because of my chosen culture I consider that person authentically racist and stupid.
By the time I was in college I viewed racial tribalism as a disgrace. Unlike Obama, who also grew up outside an epicenter of black people, I had no desire to find acceptance into the "black community". I think the notion of such a community is ridiculous; there are certainly black communities--that is communities that are composed of mostly black people; but some notion of a monolithic black community with some sort of innate culture is Platonic idealism of the racist sort. And I'm not particularly interested in being accepted by people who think that I ought to have greater allegiance or concern for people or an appreciation of their culture because they share a skin pigmentation with me or share racial heritage with me. That is stupid as fuk. There were times when I'd have been more empathetic and sympathetic toward people who did feel that way; but those times have long past, and now it is just embarrassing at the least. My "people" are the people who love and respect me, and who I love and respect, and their race is absolutely irrelevant. Black people, or white people, or any other people who don't respect that can kick rocks.
While I do feel compelled these days to speak out as a black person that isn't a Marxist who thinks white Americans are born with original sin and owe a debt to the descendants of black slaves, I do not feel that I am in any special way in a position to most effectively communicate with black people who still feel that black people ought to be racially tribalized. It would be neat if one reads something I write or hears something I say and begins to question some of the culture that they have internalized, but I have a suspicion that those most deeply engaged in the "badass motherfucker" culture are incapable of even giving my words a semi-fair trial in their brains, and like most who I have come across, will dismiss me as a coon and promise to themselves they will physically attack me if I ever express my mind in their neighborhoods (as has been expressed to me in the past).
No, I expect that more will actually come from non-black "liberals" who realize that supporting the most degenerate culture held by some black people will actually not be the best thing for most black people and from other black people in areas with a large black demographic who are already feeling the inkling that their local black thugs and wannabe-thugs who do stupid thuggish shit that get themselves killed or horribly harmed are not worth marching in the streets about under the banner of expressing resistance to White Supremacy -- maybe people will begin to see that there is a grand distinction between Jacob Blake and John Crawford III, or Emmit Till and Michael Brown. Maybe they will recognize the possibility that racism may have had little to do with the death of George Floyd, even if it was murder.
Baby steps. And then maybe one day some people will realize how absurd their strong loyalty to the Democratic Party is when statues of Robert E. Lee simultaneously deeply upsets them. And then perhaps Democrats will demand the Democratic Party finally pay reparations to the descendants of black slaves for the war they fought to maintain it, the reparations they stole that were given to freed black people after the civil war, and the terrorism that they nursed in the form of the KKK, black laws, and Jim Crow for 100 years after they lost that war, rather than trying to scapegoat their responsibility onto the American people in general or the Republican Party. Perhaps that is an unrealistic dream. We will probably sooner see the Democratic Party collapse than see it redeem itself. I'd be fine with either outcome; and if the Republican Party collapses too for altogether other reasons, I'd be be okay with that as well.
Anyway, I look forward to reading your autobiography Glenn; from your short revelation about your time in the 80s, it sounds like it will be interesting and insightful. And from the limited time I've known of you, I've found your views to be very refreshing.
Glenn, John, keep up the good work! Keep the faith. It's so slow because ... of too many reasons to list them all. But the single most important one is well known. Promiscuity.
Systemic promiscuity is the social problem.
Like so many Boomers, I used to believe in "responsible promiscuity", two consenting adults, everything sexual is OK, how can it be bad when it feels so good? ?? Nope. BS. BS on "responsible promiscuity". Even "serial monogamy" is sub-optimal. (Atheists should replace "moral" with "optimal")
Let's talk about sex (baby, let's talk about you and me...)
We should be makin' love.
Love = sexual lust PLUS commitment. The lust is the feeling. The commitment requires will power, and daily decisions to focus inevitable sexual urges onto a spouse, not objectifying the next "fine piece of a**" one sees. Even tho it's not easy.
70%+ Black kids, not growing up with the bio-fathers married to their mothers (Whites about 30% now).
Systemic Promiscuity is the biggest, and non-racist, problem. Also not easy to solve, but focusing on being super anti-racist will only be a distraction.
You blow up your own point of view when you say that Daunte Wright & Ahmaud Arbery should have just taken what was coming to them. What was coming for them came for them regardless of their resistance. Police officers should not be murdering anyone for any reason, including: 'i feared for my life'. Don't take the job then. And Arbery - too many loose guns in the hands of loose cannons. The entire culture around guns and policing and 'the right to bear arms' - that has to change. Tribalism won't change. But let's change the acceptance of casual use of guns.
Robert, you're wrong. Bad violent criminals can ONLY be stopped by people willing to be MORE violent. Police win the shootouts. The reform needed is not "arrest resistance" , but to have more monitors on the police, quicker ways to get rid of the few bad apple police, and get more Black men able and willing to be Police officers. For their neighborhoods.
Police are killing fewer than ever (have you even seen the statistics, real data?), but the number of homicides is going up. Especially Blacks killing Blacks.
Looking forward to Dr. Loury's memoir. Interesting when Dr. McWhorter points out that this idealizing of "badass motherfucker" has been a part of other American ethnic communities and not just the Black community. I think it's a very American identity. (D.H. Lawrence: "“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."). There's a romantic yearning in American masculinity to be that badass motherfucker no matter which side of the law you're on, and no matter your race. I'm not qualified by experience or study to say whether it is a special problem in the Black community, but the life experience of Dr. Loury certainly seems to attest to that. Whatever the case, these mythologies make us feel alive, but in the end do more harm than good. Perhaps part of the solution is not to argue against it as much as to find other mythologies that can make us feel alive, but without the nihilistic edge.
I am really missing MLK, the content of their character, etc....there was a moment when we were beginning to just see people for who they are and not for the color of their skin. Now skin color is all the rage. Go figure.
Let me start by saying, despite a wonderful education at a historically-white, "Ivory" League--as opposed to Ivy League--institution, I had somehow missed out on the monumentally thought-provoking musings of you two badass motherfuckers, until very recently. I like to consider myself a reasonably well-traveled, well-educated, well-exposed Black man! So for me, it is a big win, to find you, even later in life. As to the continuing scam of identity politics and antiracism, I share the frustration that Professor McWhorter noted. At the same time, maybe the fact that you guys *are* being heard, and therefore mentally/emotionally disseminated to audiences--like my friends--that would otherwise ignore you, is a net positive. Is it fast enough? Is it deep enough? Damned if I know. Just glad to hear you spout off, and hoping you will not stop.
"You can see that in the history of many people, including the Irish, including Italians. You can see it in people other than Black people today."
I actually choked up a little reading this. It's very, very much a problem in Italian-American culture. We were cut off from our roots by the Immigration Act of 1924 (aimed at reducing the number of Jews and Italians, especially from the South), and in place of our real culture and language, we got handed mobster stereotypes, goombahs, and Godfather movies.
And we actually honest-to-Gawd ate it up, and it sickens me.
I think this is part of why the trust-fund wokeists are so anxious to make sure that working-class ethnic Americans and Black Americans never sit down and connect, really talk about what we've been through. Because once we do, once we see that our problems can be better understood by the parallax that comes from having experienced them in slightly (or severely) different ways, we can make real headway on them.
But we can't talk like this, not really. Some trust-fund college brat will always sail in and yell, "SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT YOU HAD IT JUST AS BAD AS SLAVES DID?!" and I'm like, "Well no, that's not what I'm saying, but okay, let's follow that completely new idea that you only just introduced right now ... "
The point is, we didn't have it Just As Bad. We had it bad, but differently. And if we could get the trust-fund brats to STFU and get out of the room, we could really connect and understand ourselves and one another so much better.
Anyhow, yes. I agree with you both. I can see easily how it is a cultural thing, because it is with my people as well. And it takes each person recognizing that these idiot stereotypes are sold to us because we were cut off from our real roots, and that they were not created with our best interests in mind.
Dickens wrote about the dance halls and taverns in New York that were full of Black and Irish dock workers, whores, drunks, gamblers. All in the same place, boozing, dancing and fighting with each other.
Good comment. 'Trust fund wokeists' - yes / but also it's the attitude that permeates; it's not just those with access to money...it's the illusion of that whole strata; most of that strata doesn't have that money, but has been trained by 'education' to speak in those terms. Instead of money, they have relatively serviceable debt AKA lifelong debt servitude. But it's enough that the first 15 years or so, it seems manageable. Debt = addiction = ability to be manipulated; and it's on both 'sides' of the question; right wing, left wing; vomiting up whatever rhetoric gets programmed, but the underlying foundation = in financial thrall to debt collecting institutions. No time to learn to think as adults; easier to grab onto identity howling then.
I’m a white millennial progressive and you guys have dramatically changed my thinking on race issues over the past year or so. I was already skeptical of a lot of the woke bullshit but you’ve helped crystallize that instinctive aversion into a more cohesive opposition to and understanding of the Elects worldview. Several of my demographically similar friends, some of whom I’ve introduced to you guys, have had similar experiences. It’s just a drop in the bucket anecdote I know but as someone who generally inhabits the wokest of woke “spaces” - I’m a grad student at a major North Eastern university - I can sense it shifting amongst a lot of my peers. More and more of them are questioning the orthodox narratives on a lot of these issues even if just in little ways. It always seems like nothing is budging in the social zeitgeist until suddenly everything shifts dramatically. I do believe a change is coming. All of which just to say keep up the good work and don’t get too discouraged, though I’m sure I would be too if I were you.
John please be patient! You and Glenn are being heard, and it is helping, immensely. I think it's possible that the woke antiracist stuff will hit rock bottom in the next year or so, because it's so simplistic and they have to lie all the time to prop itself up. I think more and more people will start to see through it, get tired of all the nonsense (and worse) in their schools and workplaces. I think it will crash, and we'll go back to something closer to normal liberalism. Maybe. I hope. Anyway - you are helping many of us stay sane, so thank you for that!