I am old enough to remember when casual racism was fairly common in a wide cross section of white society – blacks are lazy, blacks are criminals, black hates whites, etc. When I was younger, I had no real way of assessing these statements because I didn’t know any black people until I went to high school. And even then, the small number of blacks mostly kept to themselves and only white boys in sports mingled with black boys. I was not in sports.
I was not especially virtuous so I can’t say I objected precisely to those statements, but I did notice that people who said these things also said a lot of demonstrably incorrect things about other topics. As a good beginning intellectual, I thus began to doubt these statements on race and countered these “arguments” with my own take along the lines of slavery and Jim Crow have left a negative legacy in the black community and we have to give the new (late 1970s) order of integration a chance to work, including appropriate uses of affirmative action.
I continued to make these arguments even as I went to college in a big city and, having a blue-collar background, lived off-campus in a tough part of town during the crack epidemic and soaring crime rates. I rarely had to worry about groups of whites or Asians accosting me on some street corner, but way more than once did I have to rely on some good situational awareness to avoid black guys on the street corners. And when I took mass transit, it wasn’t white guys who frequently tried to manufacture a fight by bumping into me and then claiming I bumped into them.
But I was able to compartmentalize this ongoing situation as mere anecdotes of my experience and not historical events supported by data. Not so most of the people I debated with because most people are not intellectuals. They do not form their ideas and opinions by carefully examining all sides of an issue and seeking out contrary facts and reasoning to test their conclusions. No. Most people are empiricists and pragmatists driven by emotional connections to their tribe, however conceived, and rather easily pick up those conclusions that keep them successfully oriented and emotionally satisfied in their environment. In a word, pathos.
As the 80s wore on into the 90s it was clear that the pathos was changing, and I less frequently was debating these issues. This was true in all settings, but most especially true in upper middle class, highly educated settings. It was apparent to me that by the end of 90s, any discussion of the plight of blacks could now follow a fairly predictable path, but it was no more founded on facts and evidence than the previous casual racism. It was simply what was done. Any deviation was typically met with some version of social class gate-keeping along the lines of “we don’t think like that,” meaning quite clearly that only lower class people concern themselves with any dysfunction in the black community.
“We” either ignore the topic (because we have much better and more lucrative things to focus on) or we utter the proper platitudes with no real concern whether those platitudes are helpful or not.
Thus the situation we find ourselves in now seems less to be the great “left” takeover of the minds and hearts of the upper middles classes than a fairly slow progression of changing attitudes towards race (and homosexuality for that matter) which has become integral to what it means to be the educated, upper middle class – that is, “we” are better than “them,” and if you persist in talking in certain ways, you are not one of us.
“Again, this not a simple straightforward issue…” In other words, it’s a complex issue. Any complex issue can be understood from a systems perspective in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics. In this case, racism and conversations about racism can be understood in terms of multiple, connected, and dynamic parts. For example, there are multiple and connected forms of racism that have been played out in varied in changing ways throughout American history and now. This newsletter points to multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of talking about racism. And the comments already posted suggest multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of addressing racism in the US.
Dr. Loury, a complaint about logistics. I wish the Monday podcasts would drop at a specified time. And the earlier the better. I'm really looking forward to the Amy Wax episode, but I don't know if it will be posted ten minutes from now, or ten hours from now.
"There are things that don’t—or can’t—get said when we talk about race in most venues in America."
Until that changes, nothing will happen. Change is impossible without discomfort and confronting reality, no matter how uncomfortable, is necessary toward creating change. I grew up during the dawn of integration in the Deep South, going to school with kids whose parents lived the "colored only" experience. To pretend nothing has changed since them is a gross insult to those parents, their parents, and so forth, but that's the central problem to "discussions" about race. Few people want actual discussions; they want to lecture, hector, and insult, and often, the people doing that are whites eager to profit from the cash cow of grievance. We're at the absurd point in human development in which people who look like people who did bad things long ago are treated as if they themselves did those things. This cannot possibly end well.
The roots of most white Americans were not planted here until AFTER the Civil War; they came during the great immigration waves of the 20th century. How in the world are they responsible for a past they have no connection to? I hate to break it to people but someone like me gains nothing when black American struggles and suffers. If anything, I - we - lose a great deal in terms of human potential plus the attendant costs of remedial efforts that appear designed to fail. When people talk of the black family being torn apart, the same discussion could apply to white families. The bulk of mass shooters are white and almost each one comes from a dysfunctional home. People overlook this among white families because 1) their proportion of the white & overall populations is lower and 2) there is neither political gain nor personal enrichment to be had from peddling white grievance. The problems of the majority do not make for breathless news coverage or spawn legislation or generate much conversation in the mainstream.
A person who is black and even marginally capable has the world at his/her feet. A person who is black and truly capable is golden. Such folks are not aberrations; they are more common than the knuckleheads who suck so much oxygen from the room. I've known professionals who happen to be black my entire life and that's just it: they are professionals who happen to be black, not black professionals. Did they face some obstacles? Maybe. Was their journey more difficult than a white person's? In a time of affirmative action, that's hard to say but let's assume it was. They succeeded anyway. Was the secret recipe for this success only available to them?
I recall an old 60 Minutes interview in which Mike Wallace was asking Morgan Freeman about race and what to do about it. Freeman's response was as brief as it was eloquent - "stop talking about it." The topic itself has a way of reducing everyone involved to no more than skin color, to what we hear from the CRT dogma as a oppressors and the oppressed. Freeman's contention was that black history month insulting, that black history is American history and just as valid in October or April as it is in February. What's happened since then? Every other grievance group has come forward to claim its special month and the fallout of treating everything as special is that eventually, nothing is special. Special has become the new ordinary.
We need much more serious talk about the moral formation of the young and the reformation of the young and the not-so-young.
Children need attention, affection, help, supervision, and reasonable rules. They also need gender-specific support, with boys needing men as father figures and girls needing women as mother figures. Both do best with husband-and-wife teams giving support. Nature and nurture both matter.
Once the emotional damage of inadequate parenting is done, the next best thing is depth psychotherapy. This is expensive but pays for itself over and over. Charities can and should make it possible for anyone who needs it to get it. It takes years--for some, decades--to be completed. I have had this therapy and know its value. It is not always comfortable and some people quit. But the things we need are sometimes uncomfortable.
Who is the "we" having this "conversation"? Because frankly it sure seems like the answer is "educated, well-heeled urbanites and knowledge-industry workers," or people who mostly don't get stopped by the cops on a regular basis, live or work in the few blasted urban communities where the vast majority of black crime happens, or take an active hand in criminal justice or police policy. Moreover, the "conversation" is almost exclusively at 40,000 feet; discussing monolithic "Blacks" and "Whites" and "Asians" instead of actually looking at individual communities and lives.
I submit that the fact of the conversation is itself toxic, and everyone would be far better served if people would just tend to their own gardens as best as they could instead of pontificating. To borrow an old saying, "those who can, do. Those who can't, talk."
Honestly, there are two things that would help poor blacks and every other poor ethnic group: a restoration of order in the public schools (or a move to orderly alternative schools such as charter schools), and rigorous, effective instruction in reading starting in kindergarten. As long as schools are in chaos and children do not learn to read fluently, many dysfunctional aspects of impoverished communities will remain basically hopeless.
Both of these things can be done, at least in principle.
Great conversation. As Glenn points out, the world won’t wait, the Chinese won’t wait… we’re wringing our hands about perceived slights while others plan to destroy us. I’m not liking the chapter I can’t see. Glenn and John, you’re so articulate, but you’re still not throwing your haymaker. You know all this race crap - not that there isn’t some racism ( news flash: worldwide) - is mostly bullshit designed to create a new and better and less assailable plantation. As someone said, a population of any measure can be free or they can be “taken care of” by the government (or a plantation owner). But they can’t be both.
Of course it’s even worse than this. It’s not just that the bias narrative is all one is permitted to cite no matter how ridiculously, aggressively convoluted and implausible in certain instances or in adequate in explaining certain phenomenon. Think of “‘white supremacy’ is wholly responsible for vicious bias attacks by people who aren’t white against vulnerable Americans of Asian ethnicity”. Or, consider the always execrable Michael Harriott, just out with “Why Firing White Teachers Is a Great Idea”.
The bias narrative must now also often be accompanied by grinning, gloating attacks on people who are white, simply for being white. It’s increasingly clear that if you want to be tolerated at all as a white person in some of these circles your only real value is in internalizing and echoing that everything is indeed your fault and you’re deeply sorry - to give confirmation to the narrative and carte blanche to the agenda. How else does a teachers’ union ostensibly there to represent and protect all its members instead agree to layoffs and rehiring based on skin color?
I haven’t related this before I think because I didn’t want it to overshadow all of the many, many good conversations I had. But in doing at times sweaty, grueling organizing work to help elect a (reasonable) reform DA in Brooklyn several years ago, I had the following experience. It didn’t take place in Red Hook Houses or Albany Houses, or Farragut Houses, or at the very southern edge of Ft. Greene Park, across from Walt Whitman Houses, where the residents were at times blunt and funny but were virtually always gracious and often quite warm and kind. It took place closer to the top of Ft. Greene Park and my interlocutors were two very preppie, well-dressed, by all appearances young and fairly affluent professional couples. In that job, I simply approached everybody. Some conversations were much more meaningful and productive than others. The core goal was to let Brooklyn voters know that after a couple decades of a dominant incumbent they had a choice. I wanted residents of public housing to know their and their neighbors’ experiences and thoughts mattered and to hear what was on their minds re: how and what crimes were prosecuted in Brooklyn.
About a minute into speaking with the aforementioned couples, one of the men, a tall, attractive guy far better dressed than I was, tried the following: “Did you just say ______?!!”
You all know the word. I was so genuinely, innocently startled I looked up and scanned everyone’s faces, and simply said “no, I didn’t say that word. I didn’t say anything that remotely sounded like that word.” The second guy joined in: “Are you sure you didn’t just say _____?!”
If it hadn’t been for the two women, who were visibly embarrassed, I could have been in real trouble. For daring to try and help elect a non-white reform DA while being white. One of the women said “he didn’t say that”. The other shook her head and sort of shrugged “I didn’t hear that”. They weren’t going to call out their boyfriends for trying to pull that stunt, at least in front of me. But they weren’t going to stand there and say nothing, and let the accusation go unchallenged. For that, I’m truly grateful. All there was to do at that point was to wrap up the conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible in an attempt to turn the focus back to…you know, we’ve got a chance to elect a reform DA.
When a conversation goes that far sideways, out of nowhere, the best thing to do after just walking and breathing a bit, is to talk with someone else. Like the aging tough guys at the bottom of the park who sized me up a little and challenged me with a bit of mostly friendly banter - before engaging with me about some of the issues and (two out of four) putting their names down in support. I’ve wondered now and again what could have motivated young men more apparently fashionable and successful than myself to, utterly out of the blue, accuse me of using the single ugliest word in English and the one most associated with racial hatred, abuse, and dehumanization. Was it that I’d dared to approach them and engage with not only them but their girlfriends? Was it that this white guy was out sweating in the park, working to elect a reform DA while they weren’t involved and were instead out for a leisurely stroll?
Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified. Maybe those men were insecure or easily threatened. Maybe they knew they talked a certain talk but generally couldn’t be bothered to back it up with positive action. Organizing work pays crap wages, often with no benefits let alone job security, and anyone you approach can casually - or rudely - tell you to get lost. It’s not very cool. It’s earnest but grinding work and what makes it worthwhile are the positive conversations you do have, especially those which recover from an awkward start or defy superficial expectations.
What’s frustrating is that so often it’s the actually privileged people, the people who have professional or even more so media platforms, who seem determined to frame every public policy issue, every social issue, through the most totalizing, racially reifying, essentializing, and divisive, even scapegoating lens. However he tries to rationalize it, you can tell that, for the Michael Harriotts of the world (and they’re all over the dominant left of center media these days) simply making teachers suffer for being white, without knowing or caring anything else about them - how passionately and effectively they engage with their students, how much they sacrifice their own pleasures to buy classroom supplies - is the very point. It’s the goal. Maligning and mistreating people based on their skin color and not only being able to get away with it, but actually being celebrated as bold and serious thought leaders, based on spewing the lowest kind of bigotry and seeking to condemn and immiserate people by race, is almost palpably thrilling. It’s incentivized. And those incentives - total impunity for open bigotry and discrimination , if not praise and promotion - combine with broader social assumptions gaining public currency and institutional teeth by the day: anything (really anyone) white is bad and the only way we can really “confront” and “dismantle” racism in whatever forms it’s said to be responsible for any shortcomings public or personal is to openly and unapologetically demean and discriminate against white people. Most regular people have far too much decency and character to fall for or engage in the worst of this. But, again, so often it seems like a higher proportion of the people who have the loudest megaphones and loftiest platforms see it as their personal just desserts and the means by which their group goals will be achieved.
Glenn states that,"There are things that don’t get said when we talk about race in America." Glenn, you might want to add that there are races that don't get mentioned when you talk about Race in America! When you mention Race, you clearly only mean ''The Black Race". Just as some people view everything through a racial lens, Glenn and John view the race angle only through a Black lens. Even though Glenn will have the odd Asian or two on his show every now and then, it is clear that serious discussions about Race center about one racial group only. A broader vision of what constitutes a so-called 'disadvantage' in America, and not one that's just race-based, might lead to more insightful discussions.
They may bill themselves as "The Black Guys", but it would be more apt to term them, "The Black Guys who talk about Black Guys".
Interesting stories on the cognitive dissonance of the left, although like Robert I have a more cynical take that it is just rationalizing their grift. The statistics are clear that the only way productive way forward is to reproduce, as best as possible, the values that are normally taught to children by the family. I only see that happening with vouchers run by the Black Church. I'd love to see other ideas but absent a better argument that has to center our discussions. It's not that Bob Woodward doesn't do great work, but that the issue that needs to be addressed is how do you scale it? I started my journey to the Glenn Show when I chanced upon the eulogy of Whitney Houston. I would suggest the answer to Glenn's question of where are they should start there as well.
Unfortunately, I believe all Americans are being abused by a corrupt administrative state that is clinging to power with their cold, near dead hands. This is a power struggle that transcends race.
I don't think the academic propagators of systemic racism care about the facts. These are generally postmodernist, neo-marxists, who believe that everything can be reduced to power; and if they can convince enough black people that whites are oppressing them, and enough white people that they are oppressors (or "white adjacent" Asians), then they can obtain power.
McWhorter says he's "surprised" that someone with such intelligence fails to evaluate him objectively. But I do wonder if he really believes that -- perhaps he's just being kind -- because history has shown us, unequivocally, that there are many geniuses who seek power over truth, and who have no interest in goodness. Hitler, Stalin and Mao would happily manipulate the masses to achieve their ends.
In regards to the masses who believe in this -- well, I think they are just influenced by their professors. Academia has become sort of a reeducation camp.
I will start by clearing my throat and admitting that I'm both terribly biased and cynical, but the reason (IMHO) why "the bias narrative" is the One Approved Truth is because it is the foundational dogma of White Saviorism aka Woke Social Justice, which is simply a rebooted 21st-century White Man's Burden.
In the Social Justice dispensation the sacred narrative is that the heroic NYT/NPR modern Quaker takes the poor helpless black person by the hand and promises to feel their pain, protect them from those Other Whites who "just don't get it" and maybe score them a job in the Diversity sector. This is why white liberals treat black people like children, because they see themselves as the protagonists in this new Civil Rights narrative and for the protagonist to be a hero there needs to a helpless victim to save.
And as for the Carol Simpsons of the world, we can tell that her beliefs are more theological than reasonable, because she can't really defend them with reason or facts, but only by denouncing any dissenters as evil heretics. And while she may accuse anyone to the right of her of mercenary motives, we know she is also not beyond opportunism: If she never budges from the Bias Narrative, she and her family will always have a seat in media, culture, academia, as these are all owned by the Left, and there will be all sorts of career and financial opportunities; but if she allows any right-coded thoughts to creep into her head, she'll be banished to the grim underworld of Red America, where you maybe get on Fox occasionally but you'll never get a perch in academia or your pic taken with the Obamas.
So the Bias Narrative will reign mostly unopposed as long as the modern Social Justice movement remains a show written, produced and directed by white liberals, with the paramount purpose always being the fulfillment of their emotional, spiritual and political needs.
The systemic racism position leaves no room for solutions that will make black lives better and I think this is the objective of folks who push this position. As Thomas Sowell has stated, the racism industry has ensured that welfare bureaucrats and bureaucrats of inner city schools are in no danger of being poor.
I am old enough to remember when casual racism was fairly common in a wide cross section of white society – blacks are lazy, blacks are criminals, black hates whites, etc. When I was younger, I had no real way of assessing these statements because I didn’t know any black people until I went to high school. And even then, the small number of blacks mostly kept to themselves and only white boys in sports mingled with black boys. I was not in sports.
I was not especially virtuous so I can’t say I objected precisely to those statements, but I did notice that people who said these things also said a lot of demonstrably incorrect things about other topics. As a good beginning intellectual, I thus began to doubt these statements on race and countered these “arguments” with my own take along the lines of slavery and Jim Crow have left a negative legacy in the black community and we have to give the new (late 1970s) order of integration a chance to work, including appropriate uses of affirmative action.
I continued to make these arguments even as I went to college in a big city and, having a blue-collar background, lived off-campus in a tough part of town during the crack epidemic and soaring crime rates. I rarely had to worry about groups of whites or Asians accosting me on some street corner, but way more than once did I have to rely on some good situational awareness to avoid black guys on the street corners. And when I took mass transit, it wasn’t white guys who frequently tried to manufacture a fight by bumping into me and then claiming I bumped into them.
But I was able to compartmentalize this ongoing situation as mere anecdotes of my experience and not historical events supported by data. Not so most of the people I debated with because most people are not intellectuals. They do not form their ideas and opinions by carefully examining all sides of an issue and seeking out contrary facts and reasoning to test their conclusions. No. Most people are empiricists and pragmatists driven by emotional connections to their tribe, however conceived, and rather easily pick up those conclusions that keep them successfully oriented and emotionally satisfied in their environment. In a word, pathos.
As the 80s wore on into the 90s it was clear that the pathos was changing, and I less frequently was debating these issues. This was true in all settings, but most especially true in upper middle class, highly educated settings. It was apparent to me that by the end of 90s, any discussion of the plight of blacks could now follow a fairly predictable path, but it was no more founded on facts and evidence than the previous casual racism. It was simply what was done. Any deviation was typically met with some version of social class gate-keeping along the lines of “we don’t think like that,” meaning quite clearly that only lower class people concern themselves with any dysfunction in the black community.
“We” either ignore the topic (because we have much better and more lucrative things to focus on) or we utter the proper platitudes with no real concern whether those platitudes are helpful or not.
Thus the situation we find ourselves in now seems less to be the great “left” takeover of the minds and hearts of the upper middles classes than a fairly slow progression of changing attitudes towards race (and homosexuality for that matter) which has become integral to what it means to be the educated, upper middle class – that is, “we” are better than “them,” and if you persist in talking in certain ways, you are not one of us.
“Again, this not a simple straightforward issue…” In other words, it’s a complex issue. Any complex issue can be understood from a systems perspective in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics. In this case, racism and conversations about racism can be understood in terms of multiple, connected, and dynamic parts. For example, there are multiple and connected forms of racism that have been played out in varied in changing ways throughout American history and now. This newsletter points to multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of talking about racism. And the comments already posted suggest multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of addressing racism in the US.
Dr. Loury, a complaint about logistics. I wish the Monday podcasts would drop at a specified time. And the earlier the better. I'm really looking forward to the Amy Wax episode, but I don't know if it will be posted ten minutes from now, or ten hours from now.
"There are things that don’t—or can’t—get said when we talk about race in most venues in America."
Until that changes, nothing will happen. Change is impossible without discomfort and confronting reality, no matter how uncomfortable, is necessary toward creating change. I grew up during the dawn of integration in the Deep South, going to school with kids whose parents lived the "colored only" experience. To pretend nothing has changed since them is a gross insult to those parents, their parents, and so forth, but that's the central problem to "discussions" about race. Few people want actual discussions; they want to lecture, hector, and insult, and often, the people doing that are whites eager to profit from the cash cow of grievance. We're at the absurd point in human development in which people who look like people who did bad things long ago are treated as if they themselves did those things. This cannot possibly end well.
The roots of most white Americans were not planted here until AFTER the Civil War; they came during the great immigration waves of the 20th century. How in the world are they responsible for a past they have no connection to? I hate to break it to people but someone like me gains nothing when black American struggles and suffers. If anything, I - we - lose a great deal in terms of human potential plus the attendant costs of remedial efforts that appear designed to fail. When people talk of the black family being torn apart, the same discussion could apply to white families. The bulk of mass shooters are white and almost each one comes from a dysfunctional home. People overlook this among white families because 1) their proportion of the white & overall populations is lower and 2) there is neither political gain nor personal enrichment to be had from peddling white grievance. The problems of the majority do not make for breathless news coverage or spawn legislation or generate much conversation in the mainstream.
A person who is black and even marginally capable has the world at his/her feet. A person who is black and truly capable is golden. Such folks are not aberrations; they are more common than the knuckleheads who suck so much oxygen from the room. I've known professionals who happen to be black my entire life and that's just it: they are professionals who happen to be black, not black professionals. Did they face some obstacles? Maybe. Was their journey more difficult than a white person's? In a time of affirmative action, that's hard to say but let's assume it was. They succeeded anyway. Was the secret recipe for this success only available to them?
I recall an old 60 Minutes interview in which Mike Wallace was asking Morgan Freeman about race and what to do about it. Freeman's response was as brief as it was eloquent - "stop talking about it." The topic itself has a way of reducing everyone involved to no more than skin color, to what we hear from the CRT dogma as a oppressors and the oppressed. Freeman's contention was that black history month insulting, that black history is American history and just as valid in October or April as it is in February. What's happened since then? Every other grievance group has come forward to claim its special month and the fallout of treating everything as special is that eventually, nothing is special. Special has become the new ordinary.
We need much more serious talk about the moral formation of the young and the reformation of the young and the not-so-young.
Children need attention, affection, help, supervision, and reasonable rules. They also need gender-specific support, with boys needing men as father figures and girls needing women as mother figures. Both do best with husband-and-wife teams giving support. Nature and nurture both matter.
Once the emotional damage of inadequate parenting is done, the next best thing is depth psychotherapy. This is expensive but pays for itself over and over. Charities can and should make it possible for anyone who needs it to get it. It takes years--for some, decades--to be completed. I have had this therapy and know its value. It is not always comfortable and some people quit. But the things we need are sometimes uncomfortable.
i often get the same feeling listening to Dr. McWhorter’s excuses for woke acolytes as i do when hearing the left’s reasoning for soft bigotry.
‘it’s not their fault! these poor intelligent, well-meaning people were just educated by the wrong types!’
and the idea that because all humans like to feel good, those who do so via close- minded cruelty justified by racial grift should be glossed over?
it pisses me off, too, Professor Loury.
Who is the "we" having this "conversation"? Because frankly it sure seems like the answer is "educated, well-heeled urbanites and knowledge-industry workers," or people who mostly don't get stopped by the cops on a regular basis, live or work in the few blasted urban communities where the vast majority of black crime happens, or take an active hand in criminal justice or police policy. Moreover, the "conversation" is almost exclusively at 40,000 feet; discussing monolithic "Blacks" and "Whites" and "Asians" instead of actually looking at individual communities and lives.
I submit that the fact of the conversation is itself toxic, and everyone would be far better served if people would just tend to their own gardens as best as they could instead of pontificating. To borrow an old saying, "those who can, do. Those who can't, talk."
Honestly, there are two things that would help poor blacks and every other poor ethnic group: a restoration of order in the public schools (or a move to orderly alternative schools such as charter schools), and rigorous, effective instruction in reading starting in kindergarten. As long as schools are in chaos and children do not learn to read fluently, many dysfunctional aspects of impoverished communities will remain basically hopeless.
Both of these things can be done, at least in principle.
Great conversation. As Glenn points out, the world won’t wait, the Chinese won’t wait… we’re wringing our hands about perceived slights while others plan to destroy us. I’m not liking the chapter I can’t see. Glenn and John, you’re so articulate, but you’re still not throwing your haymaker. You know all this race crap - not that there isn’t some racism ( news flash: worldwide) - is mostly bullshit designed to create a new and better and less assailable plantation. As someone said, a population of any measure can be free or they can be “taken care of” by the government (or a plantation owner). But they can’t be both.
Of course it’s even worse than this. It’s not just that the bias narrative is all one is permitted to cite no matter how ridiculously, aggressively convoluted and implausible in certain instances or in adequate in explaining certain phenomenon. Think of “‘white supremacy’ is wholly responsible for vicious bias attacks by people who aren’t white against vulnerable Americans of Asian ethnicity”. Or, consider the always execrable Michael Harriott, just out with “Why Firing White Teachers Is a Great Idea”.
The bias narrative must now also often be accompanied by grinning, gloating attacks on people who are white, simply for being white. It’s increasingly clear that if you want to be tolerated at all as a white person in some of these circles your only real value is in internalizing and echoing that everything is indeed your fault and you’re deeply sorry - to give confirmation to the narrative and carte blanche to the agenda. How else does a teachers’ union ostensibly there to represent and protect all its members instead agree to layoffs and rehiring based on skin color?
I haven’t related this before I think because I didn’t want it to overshadow all of the many, many good conversations I had. But in doing at times sweaty, grueling organizing work to help elect a (reasonable) reform DA in Brooklyn several years ago, I had the following experience. It didn’t take place in Red Hook Houses or Albany Houses, or Farragut Houses, or at the very southern edge of Ft. Greene Park, across from Walt Whitman Houses, where the residents were at times blunt and funny but were virtually always gracious and often quite warm and kind. It took place closer to the top of Ft. Greene Park and my interlocutors were two very preppie, well-dressed, by all appearances young and fairly affluent professional couples. In that job, I simply approached everybody. Some conversations were much more meaningful and productive than others. The core goal was to let Brooklyn voters know that after a couple decades of a dominant incumbent they had a choice. I wanted residents of public housing to know their and their neighbors’ experiences and thoughts mattered and to hear what was on their minds re: how and what crimes were prosecuted in Brooklyn.
About a minute into speaking with the aforementioned couples, one of the men, a tall, attractive guy far better dressed than I was, tried the following: “Did you just say ______?!!”
You all know the word. I was so genuinely, innocently startled I looked up and scanned everyone’s faces, and simply said “no, I didn’t say that word. I didn’t say anything that remotely sounded like that word.” The second guy joined in: “Are you sure you didn’t just say _____?!”
If it hadn’t been for the two women, who were visibly embarrassed, I could have been in real trouble. For daring to try and help elect a non-white reform DA while being white. One of the women said “he didn’t say that”. The other shook her head and sort of shrugged “I didn’t hear that”. They weren’t going to call out their boyfriends for trying to pull that stunt, at least in front of me. But they weren’t going to stand there and say nothing, and let the accusation go unchallenged. For that, I’m truly grateful. All there was to do at that point was to wrap up the conversation as quickly and smoothly as possible in an attempt to turn the focus back to…you know, we’ve got a chance to elect a reform DA.
When a conversation goes that far sideways, out of nowhere, the best thing to do after just walking and breathing a bit, is to talk with someone else. Like the aging tough guys at the bottom of the park who sized me up a little and challenged me with a bit of mostly friendly banter - before engaging with me about some of the issues and (two out of four) putting their names down in support. I’ve wondered now and again what could have motivated young men more apparently fashionable and successful than myself to, utterly out of the blue, accuse me of using the single ugliest word in English and the one most associated with racial hatred, abuse, and dehumanization. Was it that I’d dared to approach them and engage with not only them but their girlfriends? Was it that this white guy was out sweating in the park, working to elect a reform DA while they weren’t involved and were instead out for a leisurely stroll?
Some human beings, whatever their color, or ethnicity, will push the envelope as far they think they can get away with it. They’ll be as cynical and dishonest and use anything at their disposal to try and demonize or scapegoat others, as long as they can tell themselves and others tell them it’s somehow justified. Maybe those men were insecure or easily threatened. Maybe they knew they talked a certain talk but generally couldn’t be bothered to back it up with positive action. Organizing work pays crap wages, often with no benefits let alone job security, and anyone you approach can casually - or rudely - tell you to get lost. It’s not very cool. It’s earnest but grinding work and what makes it worthwhile are the positive conversations you do have, especially those which recover from an awkward start or defy superficial expectations.
What’s frustrating is that so often it’s the actually privileged people, the people who have professional or even more so media platforms, who seem determined to frame every public policy issue, every social issue, through the most totalizing, racially reifying, essentializing, and divisive, even scapegoating lens. However he tries to rationalize it, you can tell that, for the Michael Harriotts of the world (and they’re all over the dominant left of center media these days) simply making teachers suffer for being white, without knowing or caring anything else about them - how passionately and effectively they engage with their students, how much they sacrifice their own pleasures to buy classroom supplies - is the very point. It’s the goal. Maligning and mistreating people based on their skin color and not only being able to get away with it, but actually being celebrated as bold and serious thought leaders, based on spewing the lowest kind of bigotry and seeking to condemn and immiserate people by race, is almost palpably thrilling. It’s incentivized. And those incentives - total impunity for open bigotry and discrimination , if not praise and promotion - combine with broader social assumptions gaining public currency and institutional teeth by the day: anything (really anyone) white is bad and the only way we can really “confront” and “dismantle” racism in whatever forms it’s said to be responsible for any shortcomings public or personal is to openly and unapologetically demean and discriminate against white people. Most regular people have far too much decency and character to fall for or engage in the worst of this. But, again, so often it seems like a higher proportion of the people who have the loudest megaphones and loftiest platforms see it as their personal just desserts and the means by which their group goals will be achieved.
Glenn states that,"There are things that don’t get said when we talk about race in America." Glenn, you might want to add that there are races that don't get mentioned when you talk about Race in America! When you mention Race, you clearly only mean ''The Black Race". Just as some people view everything through a racial lens, Glenn and John view the race angle only through a Black lens. Even though Glenn will have the odd Asian or two on his show every now and then, it is clear that serious discussions about Race center about one racial group only. A broader vision of what constitutes a so-called 'disadvantage' in America, and not one that's just race-based, might lead to more insightful discussions.
They may bill themselves as "The Black Guys", but it would be more apt to term them, "The Black Guys who talk about Black Guys".
Interesting stories on the cognitive dissonance of the left, although like Robert I have a more cynical take that it is just rationalizing their grift. The statistics are clear that the only way productive way forward is to reproduce, as best as possible, the values that are normally taught to children by the family. I only see that happening with vouchers run by the Black Church. I'd love to see other ideas but absent a better argument that has to center our discussions. It's not that Bob Woodward doesn't do great work, but that the issue that needs to be addressed is how do you scale it? I started my journey to the Glenn Show when I chanced upon the eulogy of Whitney Houston. I would suggest the answer to Glenn's question of where are they should start there as well.
Unfortunately, I believe all Americans are being abused by a corrupt administrative state that is clinging to power with their cold, near dead hands. This is a power struggle that transcends race.
I don't think the academic propagators of systemic racism care about the facts. These are generally postmodernist, neo-marxists, who believe that everything can be reduced to power; and if they can convince enough black people that whites are oppressing them, and enough white people that they are oppressors (or "white adjacent" Asians), then they can obtain power.
McWhorter says he's "surprised" that someone with such intelligence fails to evaluate him objectively. But I do wonder if he really believes that -- perhaps he's just being kind -- because history has shown us, unequivocally, that there are many geniuses who seek power over truth, and who have no interest in goodness. Hitler, Stalin and Mao would happily manipulate the masses to achieve their ends.
In regards to the masses who believe in this -- well, I think they are just influenced by their professors. Academia has become sort of a reeducation camp.
I will start by clearing my throat and admitting that I'm both terribly biased and cynical, but the reason (IMHO) why "the bias narrative" is the One Approved Truth is because it is the foundational dogma of White Saviorism aka Woke Social Justice, which is simply a rebooted 21st-century White Man's Burden.
In the Social Justice dispensation the sacred narrative is that the heroic NYT/NPR modern Quaker takes the poor helpless black person by the hand and promises to feel their pain, protect them from those Other Whites who "just don't get it" and maybe score them a job in the Diversity sector. This is why white liberals treat black people like children, because they see themselves as the protagonists in this new Civil Rights narrative and for the protagonist to be a hero there needs to a helpless victim to save.
And as for the Carol Simpsons of the world, we can tell that her beliefs are more theological than reasonable, because she can't really defend them with reason or facts, but only by denouncing any dissenters as evil heretics. And while she may accuse anyone to the right of her of mercenary motives, we know she is also not beyond opportunism: If she never budges from the Bias Narrative, she and her family will always have a seat in media, culture, academia, as these are all owned by the Left, and there will be all sorts of career and financial opportunities; but if she allows any right-coded thoughts to creep into her head, she'll be banished to the grim underworld of Red America, where you maybe get on Fox occasionally but you'll never get a perch in academia or your pic taken with the Obamas.
So the Bias Narrative will reign mostly unopposed as long as the modern Social Justice movement remains a show written, produced and directed by white liberals, with the paramount purpose always being the fulfillment of their emotional, spiritual and political needs.
The systemic racism position leaves no room for solutions that will make black lives better and I think this is the objective of folks who push this position. As Thomas Sowell has stated, the racism industry has ensured that welfare bureaucrats and bureaucrats of inner city schools are in no danger of being poor.