The Decline of the Black Liberal Public Intellectual
with John McWhorter
I’ve had my friend Cornel West on The Glenn Show several times over the years. We have many political disagreements, but I have all the respect in the world for his intellect, his curiosity about the world, and his eagerness to talk to “the other side” in good faith. Younger left-liberal black public intellectuals have not, by and large, measured up to his standard. In this clip from one of our subscriber-only Q&A sessions, John and I discuss the decline of our “opponents” in the race debate. We even get a little wistful about Ta-Nehisi Coates!
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I appreciate he's your pal, and I respect that you're showing support for him, but it seems to me that Cornell West has ridden that same decline as well. Check his twitter of late. He's busy posting antisemitic nonsense about genocide/ethnic cleansing in Gaza, as though those words have malleable meanings. He's apoplectic about the resignation of a mediocre plagiarist from Harvard which he's trying to code as the height of racism. He's reading off of the same ridiculous script as the people you say are emblematic of this decline. How is he any different? What am I missing?
If you buy into the idea that black Americans face oppression, then the loss of Coates and the rise of Kendi is lamentable. In some ways, the likes of Kendi are expected when blacks must all be self-taught sirens of doom under the yoke of oppression. But in the long term we appreciate those like Tubman.
Today the courage and persistence of Tubman is not necessary. What if the overwhelming majority of problems black Americans face are indeed merely first world problems? Interestingly enough, I have personally heard stories of black Harvard students complaining that they were mistaken for students at Northeastern as an example of the harsh racism they endured.
Let me put it simply, a world of microaggressions does not lead men like Thurgood Marshall into battle. They find other things to do. Where is today's Great Migration? Nothing moves us so compellingly. We scrape the interwebz for outrage. I wonder if the fate of St. George entered the minds of the Harvard Corporation in their hunt for Gay. Is that as bad as it gets? Search committees for public intellectuals?