As is so often the case, more than one factor influences phenomena. I'm thinking of two at the moment.
First, flashes in the pan very often don't last because they aren't real. I'm thinking of untested hypotheses. An idea comes to mind, it sounds good but is never actually tested. This would get an actual social scientist laughed off the stage. It just wouldn't happen.
Which leads to the second. What's the motivation behind the speaker who on the surface seeks to lead or to advance thinking with their new idea? Celebrity? Personal advancement, both in reputation and in dollars? Wouldn't want that idea to be tested to see how it stands up empirically, now would we?
It seems we've had cults of personality forever. We do like our kings, as long as they're ours. But don't look under the hood. If we do, though, and look after things under the hood, those four wheeled people movers tend to last longer. Could be the same with ideas.
Activism is never about individual activists; it's about perpetuating the cause, whatever the cause may be. It's very likely that Henry Rogers will disappear from public view in due course but he'll be replaced by a new grifter who will again pick at old scabs. That's the whole point of activism - there is never a problem to be solved with genuine solutions; there is just an issue to be exploited for personal gain for as long as possible. And it's not just race. The same holds true for feminism, gay rights, the trans movement that is both anti-woman and anti-gay, the enviros, and so forth.
I can’t blame Sowell for suffering battle fatigue. Fortunately, other outstanding scholars, like Glenn and John, and younger voices, like Coleman, have stepped into the void to ensure rational discussion of race (among other topics) continues.
Probably a bit of a mistake to mention Hughes in the same discussion with Kendi.
Kendi is an intellectually bankrupt con man. Coleman I see, as with many with large YT followings, is an Intellectual Journalist. A true intellectual synthesizes new ideas, new relationships, new perspectives or new concepts. This is not a prerequisite to be an Intellectual Journalist. The Intellectual Journalists will have to keep up with the Intellectual landscape, or will fade over time.
Coleman, as many others, DO have in my estimation the intellectual horsepower to become deep thinkers, synthesizers, true intellectuals. The distraction of the mass communications market place very well may distract them from putting in the lonely rigorous labor to become that next Sowell, Loury or McWhorter. Or perhaps there is a path through Intellectual Journalism that will get them into the synthesis level of mastery.
Hughes is a clown. Like Loury and Uncle Tom-So-Well, he has produced nothing original ,or of merit. The problem for Hughes is, he doesn't have thinktank money or government support like Loury or Tom-So-Well.
I think I see your points. Pragmatic and especially non-Identity Marxist Black Intellectuals trigger the free lunch crowd. Emotional Logic sure feels like the only logical answer.
The conversation brought to mind an old quote by Booker T. Washington which is a constant reminder that no matter who is doing the speaking, there will (as LR said) always be someone making the same case:
"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their trouble they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob(pg. 118)"
He was a pretty remarkable man, and very prescient. I believe he would be astounded (maybe not?) at the progress that has been made over the past 75 years(slow and hard won, but still remarkable). Until we can all figure out how to get along, those types will keep keeping on. And they have continued to make a pretty good living from it.
It is my fervent hope that the two of you continue your success and will still be around in another 20 years being the voices of reason.(Likewise i hope to be here also reading ;-) ) And yes I also believe that Coleman Hughes will also be around then as well.
Jane Elliott and Dr. Cornel West have nothing left to prove and are still going strong. Dr. Henry Louis Gates falls into that category also.
I only heard of Thomas Sowell, who is now in his twilight years, for the first time a few years ago and his work seems to be finding an audience among younger Gen X'ers who weren't yet of age in the 70s and 80s when he apparently had national media exposure. It's also interesting to see the posthumous resurgence of the late James Baldwin in recent years. It compelled me to pull up the YouTube video of the debate he had with William F. Buckley, Jr. in the 60's at Cambridge (which was interesting to say the least).
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is beyond that 10 year window. He's been a public figure for about 15-20 years now and is a contemporary of the folks Loury and McWhorter named.
Larry Elder has been at it for a while and got lots of national exposure when he ran for CA governor recently. On the flip side, you don't even hear of Star Parker, Armstrong Williams, and Alan Keyes anymore.
While she will never win Ebony's Top 100 Black Females, much of the world is still very interested in what the Director of the Hoover Institute has to say.
Seemingly those that are interested in what she has to say are interested in her insights and little in the color of her skin.
I didn't know that about Armstrong Williams. Interesting.
I don't think we've heard from Alan Keyes since he was conscripted by the GOP to run against Obama in Illinois as a carpetbagger for the U.S. Senate back in like '06 I think it was.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are still around. As long as there are fools on this planet (and John's democratic party will ensure there is an increasing supply of these readily available) the grifters with 3 names will keep delivering their garbage. Why would they not? It says much for where we are that I am actually giving precious time considering the proposal by a recent presidential candidate who declared that he would wipe out the dept of education in his first year of office; I am actually thinking about this instead of roundly consigning such an outlandish idea to the rubbish bin. Says a lot about where we are today.
Yessir. Nobody watches weekend news. In fact, nobody watches TV news other than the 65 and older FOX News demographic. And people who need clips for memes.
TNC updates which I have seen--he has his job teaching at Howard and after he had his run with the Black Panther comic DC is still planning to put out a Superman movie which he will write. "The Water Dancer" came out about 3/4 years ago. I suppose that he will write another book at some point but a) he already said what BTWAM says and is not interested in a whole franchise like Kendi, so it won't be written unless he has something new to say and b) he said on Colbert, "I'm a writer. I don't design programs." so some of the people who wanted BTWAM to be the last word on race may have moved on to realizing that they have to listen to people who DO design programs.
TNC used to be one of my second-tier blogging heroes because he was genuinely intellectually curious and he admitted that it was fun to be mean and cynical but that was not the way to accomplish anything. And he has to be given credit for saying that there is an organic Black conservatism. John may know some of the same types of ordinary people so I have no idea why TNC started it.
There are absolutely a lot of people who have come and gone as far as having the bullhorn over the last 50 years because white people only wanted to make one or two Black people stand in for all the Black intellectuals in the world. I don't think any particular Black person controls whether they have the bullhorn.
“…because white people only wanted to make one or two Black people stand in for all the Black intellectuals in the world.” Well, you’ve certainly got the grievance merchant’s paranoid, obsessive, single-minded, unicausal, pathetic, passive victim’s account of an entire half-century of black experience down. It speaks volumes that you can’t or won’t distinguish between 1973 and 2023 or any point in between. I wonder why, for example, those awful “white people” at a National Review-approved, more traditional liberal arts college deep in the South, over thirty years ago would offer a course called “Black Politics in Conservative America”, taught by a very left-leaning professor, and it would be packed with both white and black students.
I knew that was coming because grouping all white people together was indeed sloppy. There are white scholars of Black intellectual history even. I will instead say that the media coverage of antiracism reveals that there are many white liberals out there who simply want to know what they have to believe to be good liberals and so will choose the most absolutist people like Kendi to listen to. There are also many white conservatives out there who know what they have to believe to be good conservatives and will choose the Black opinionators/politicians who already believe those things.
That’s fair. I was a little surprised at the generalization because it didn’t fit the rest of your comment. And, just as a personal example, I remember vividly enough the excitement on the Contract with America, Gingrich right at having someone like Armstrong Williams to tokenize. Or, to make it even more personal, and perhaps add a bit of complexity, I used to almost roll my eyes when I’d see another syndicated column by Thomas Sowell in my then, at the time more conservative-leaning, Midwestern city’s paper, because I hadn’t read his books or engaged with his ideas thoughtfully, but was sure not only must be sort of the Right’s in-house economist, but one who was so prominent and beloved also in large part due to his mere skin color. More recently, I see him as a serious intellectual and major scholar whose insights are worth considering, whether I ultimately agree, disagree, or remain unsure.
Sorry to say, but 20 years from now, when Coates, Xendi, et al. are long forgotten, there will be a new crop of activists who will make the identical arguments that are being made today.
I entered the Cornell University in 1969, the year after some Black radicals occupied the student union and came out armed. My freshman orientation included a community program that exhorted us to recognize that America was systemically racist and that White people were innately and immutably racist. The exact same arguments in the exact same language as today, though, back then, you could make a plausible case that the concepts were valid.
There will always be an audience for people who are angry that the world, and the people who live in it, are imperfect. They will not admit significant progress has been made over the past 50 years. To do so would require giving up their fundamental belief that our society is oppressive at its core.
In an interview, Thomas Sowell was discussing why he had stopped writing his columns. He said the things
That were being discussed and stated were same claims from 30-40 years ago and were refuted and proved false then. The documentary, “Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World” has this interview clip.
Why can't we have a U Tube channel called "Truth and Sanity"? It would be a compendium of U tube presentations, like the G&J series, that speak to the former and try to maintain the latter with regard to what is actually driving the outcomes in the US as measured with race as the sole identifying and causative (supposedly) variable .
We have freedom of choice and widely differing talents and interests, not all of which are identical between members of a generation within one family, let alone among races. Based on personal observations, a single family can, and often does, have as much or more "Inequity" in economic and social outcomes as exists between US racial groups. If brothers, and sisters, can't create "equal outcomes" with the same racial background, family nurturing and K-12 education, how can we expect "equity" to occur, short of by fiat, between large racial groups?
I was just thinking about this very question. I'm so glad I found Glenn, John and Coleman to help me make sense of the brainwashing in our institutions that is all about virtue signally and making one's career by throwing sane people under the bus. It's a dangerous fashion and I hope it doesn't last. Ironically it does nothing to help Black people.
Sowell shuffles (figuratively) off this mortal coil , his reputation will only grow. You young men are destined to enter that exclusive club, please be patient ✌🏼
Coates was also the one who very blatantly and despicably caricatured Jordan Peterson as the Captain America villain Red Skull, portraying him as a Nazi devil. He is not person to be trusted.
As is so often the case, more than one factor influences phenomena. I'm thinking of two at the moment.
First, flashes in the pan very often don't last because they aren't real. I'm thinking of untested hypotheses. An idea comes to mind, it sounds good but is never actually tested. This would get an actual social scientist laughed off the stage. It just wouldn't happen.
Which leads to the second. What's the motivation behind the speaker who on the surface seeks to lead or to advance thinking with their new idea? Celebrity? Personal advancement, both in reputation and in dollars? Wouldn't want that idea to be tested to see how it stands up empirically, now would we?
It seems we've had cults of personality forever. We do like our kings, as long as they're ours. But don't look under the hood. If we do, though, and look after things under the hood, those four wheeled people movers tend to last longer. Could be the same with ideas.
Activism is never about individual activists; it's about perpetuating the cause, whatever the cause may be. It's very likely that Henry Rogers will disappear from public view in due course but he'll be replaced by a new grifter who will again pick at old scabs. That's the whole point of activism - there is never a problem to be solved with genuine solutions; there is just an issue to be exploited for personal gain for as long as possible. And it's not just race. The same holds true for feminism, gay rights, the trans movement that is both anti-woman and anti-gay, the enviros, and so forth.
Yes all stripes can be mean it's a human thing. I don't know why we do it but it is universal.
I can’t blame Sowell for suffering battle fatigue. Fortunately, other outstanding scholars, like Glenn and John, and younger voices, like Coleman, have stepped into the void to ensure rational discussion of race (among other topics) continues.
Probably a bit of a mistake to mention Hughes in the same discussion with Kendi.
Kendi is an intellectually bankrupt con man. Coleman I see, as with many with large YT followings, is an Intellectual Journalist. A true intellectual synthesizes new ideas, new relationships, new perspectives or new concepts. This is not a prerequisite to be an Intellectual Journalist. The Intellectual Journalists will have to keep up with the Intellectual landscape, or will fade over time.
Coleman, as many others, DO have in my estimation the intellectual horsepower to become deep thinkers, synthesizers, true intellectuals. The distraction of the mass communications market place very well may distract them from putting in the lonely rigorous labor to become that next Sowell, Loury or McWhorter. Or perhaps there is a path through Intellectual Journalism that will get them into the synthesis level of mastery.
Hughes is a clown. Like Loury and Uncle Tom-So-Well, he has produced nothing original ,or of merit. The problem for Hughes is, he doesn't have thinktank money or government support like Loury or Tom-So-Well.
I think I see your points. Pragmatic and especially non-Identity Marxist Black Intellectuals trigger the free lunch crowd. Emotional Logic sure feels like the only logical answer.
The conversation brought to mind an old quote by Booker T. Washington which is a constant reminder that no matter who is doing the speaking, there will (as LR said) always be someone making the same case:
"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their trouble they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob(pg. 118)"
He was a pretty remarkable man, and very prescient. I believe he would be astounded (maybe not?) at the progress that has been made over the past 75 years(slow and hard won, but still remarkable). Until we can all figure out how to get along, those types will keep keeping on. And they have continued to make a pretty good living from it.
It is my fervent hope that the two of you continue your success and will still be around in another 20 years being the voices of reason.(Likewise i hope to be here also reading ;-) ) And yes I also believe that Coleman Hughes will also be around then as well.
Jane Elliott and Dr. Cornel West have nothing left to prove and are still going strong. Dr. Henry Louis Gates falls into that category also.
I only heard of Thomas Sowell, who is now in his twilight years, for the first time a few years ago and his work seems to be finding an audience among younger Gen X'ers who weren't yet of age in the 70s and 80s when he apparently had national media exposure. It's also interesting to see the posthumous resurgence of the late James Baldwin in recent years. It compelled me to pull up the YouTube video of the debate he had with William F. Buckley, Jr. in the 60's at Cambridge (which was interesting to say the least).
Dr. Marc Lamont Hill is beyond that 10 year window. He's been a public figure for about 15-20 years now and is a contemporary of the folks Loury and McWhorter named.
Larry Elder has been at it for a while and got lots of national exposure when he ran for CA governor recently. On the flip side, you don't even hear of Star Parker, Armstrong Williams, and Alan Keyes anymore.
Williams was compromised , accepted bribes.
Parker has been replaced by Candace Owens ( Republicans only have mental space for one dark-skinned woman at a time ).
The whole Black Republican project has failed. You people need to go check the Latins or East Asians,.or something.
While she will never win Ebony's Top 100 Black Females, much of the world is still very interested in what the Director of the Hoover Institute has to say.
Seemingly those that are interested in what she has to say are interested in her insights and little in the color of her skin.
For the record, I'm not a Republican.
I didn't know that about Armstrong Williams. Interesting.
I don't think we've heard from Alan Keyes since he was conscripted by the GOP to run against Obama in Illinois as a carpetbagger for the U.S. Senate back in like '06 I think it was.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are still around. As long as there are fools on this planet (and John's democratic party will ensure there is an increasing supply of these readily available) the grifters with 3 names will keep delivering their garbage. Why would they not? It says much for where we are that I am actually giving precious time considering the proposal by a recent presidential candidate who declared that he would wipe out the dept of education in his first year of office; I am actually thinking about this instead of roundly consigning such an outlandish idea to the rubbish bin. Says a lot about where we are today.
Nobody has paid attention to either of those fools since Obama took over. YouTube personalities have the grifter demagogue role now.
The only place you ever here about those two incidentally, are on the usual right wing places.
Good to know Sharpton's position at MSNBC has gone so unnoticed.
Yessir. Nobody watches weekend news. In fact, nobody watches TV news other than the 65 and older FOX News demographic. And people who need clips for memes.
(TNC may have started it to show that he is not really a Black conservative himself.)
TNC updates which I have seen--he has his job teaching at Howard and after he had his run with the Black Panther comic DC is still planning to put out a Superman movie which he will write. "The Water Dancer" came out about 3/4 years ago. I suppose that he will write another book at some point but a) he already said what BTWAM says and is not interested in a whole franchise like Kendi, so it won't be written unless he has something new to say and b) he said on Colbert, "I'm a writer. I don't design programs." so some of the people who wanted BTWAM to be the last word on race may have moved on to realizing that they have to listen to people who DO design programs.
TNC used to be one of my second-tier blogging heroes because he was genuinely intellectually curious and he admitted that it was fun to be mean and cynical but that was not the way to accomplish anything. And he has to be given credit for saying that there is an organic Black conservatism. John may know some of the same types of ordinary people so I have no idea why TNC started it.
There are absolutely a lot of people who have come and gone as far as having the bullhorn over the last 50 years because white people only wanted to make one or two Black people stand in for all the Black intellectuals in the world. I don't think any particular Black person controls whether they have the bullhorn.
“…because white people only wanted to make one or two Black people stand in for all the Black intellectuals in the world.” Well, you’ve certainly got the grievance merchant’s paranoid, obsessive, single-minded, unicausal, pathetic, passive victim’s account of an entire half-century of black experience down. It speaks volumes that you can’t or won’t distinguish between 1973 and 2023 or any point in between. I wonder why, for example, those awful “white people” at a National Review-approved, more traditional liberal arts college deep in the South, over thirty years ago would offer a course called “Black Politics in Conservative America”, taught by a very left-leaning professor, and it would be packed with both white and black students.
I knew that was coming because grouping all white people together was indeed sloppy. There are white scholars of Black intellectual history even. I will instead say that the media coverage of antiracism reveals that there are many white liberals out there who simply want to know what they have to believe to be good liberals and so will choose the most absolutist people like Kendi to listen to. There are also many white conservatives out there who know what they have to believe to be good conservatives and will choose the Black opinionators/politicians who already believe those things.
That’s fair. I was a little surprised at the generalization because it didn’t fit the rest of your comment. And, just as a personal example, I remember vividly enough the excitement on the Contract with America, Gingrich right at having someone like Armstrong Williams to tokenize. Or, to make it even more personal, and perhaps add a bit of complexity, I used to almost roll my eyes when I’d see another syndicated column by Thomas Sowell in my then, at the time more conservative-leaning, Midwestern city’s paper, because I hadn’t read his books or engaged with his ideas thoughtfully, but was sure not only must be sort of the Right’s in-house economist, but one who was so prominent and beloved also in large part due to his mere skin color. More recently, I see him as a serious intellectual and major scholar whose insights are worth considering, whether I ultimately agree, disagree, or remain unsure.
Sorry to say, but 20 years from now, when Coates, Xendi, et al. are long forgotten, there will be a new crop of activists who will make the identical arguments that are being made today.
I entered the Cornell University in 1969, the year after some Black radicals occupied the student union and came out armed. My freshman orientation included a community program that exhorted us to recognize that America was systemically racist and that White people were innately and immutably racist. The exact same arguments in the exact same language as today, though, back then, you could make a plausible case that the concepts were valid.
There will always be an audience for people who are angry that the world, and the people who live in it, are imperfect. They will not admit significant progress has been made over the past 50 years. To do so would require giving up their fundamental belief that our society is oppressive at its core.
In an interview, Thomas Sowell was discussing why he had stopped writing his columns. He said the things
That were being discussed and stated were same claims from 30-40 years ago and were refuted and proved false then. The documentary, “Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World” has this interview clip.
Why can't we have a U Tube channel called "Truth and Sanity"? It would be a compendium of U tube presentations, like the G&J series, that speak to the former and try to maintain the latter with regard to what is actually driving the outcomes in the US as measured with race as the sole identifying and causative (supposedly) variable .
We have freedom of choice and widely differing talents and interests, not all of which are identical between members of a generation within one family, let alone among races. Based on personal observations, a single family can, and often does, have as much or more "Inequity" in economic and social outcomes as exists between US racial groups. If brothers, and sisters, can't create "equal outcomes" with the same racial background, family nurturing and K-12 education, how can we expect "equity" to occur, short of by fiat, between large racial groups?
whatever happened to Clarence Page? I liked whatever he wrote very much, but he's not visible any more.
Yes - wasn’t he on Washington Week in Review on PBS during the Obama administration?
I was just thinking about this very question. I'm so glad I found Glenn, John and Coleman to help me make sense of the brainwashing in our institutions that is all about virtue signally and making one's career by throwing sane people under the bus. It's a dangerous fashion and I hope it doesn't last. Ironically it does nothing to help Black people.
When the great Tom
Sowell shuffles (figuratively) off this mortal coil , his reputation will only grow. You young men are destined to enter that exclusive club, please be patient ✌🏼
Coates was also the one who very blatantly and despicably caricatured Jordan Peterson as the Captain America villain Red Skull, portraying him as a Nazi devil. He is not person to be trusted.