"Woke Racism," by John McWhorter - A Review

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Woke Racism, John McWhorter

November 18, 2021

 

“The failure of so many thinkers to understand the difference between the effects of racism

In the past and racism in the present has strangled discussions about race for decades.”

                                                                                                                                                John McWhorter

                                                                                                                                                Woke Racism, 2021

 

John McWhorter is an independent thinker – a rare (at risk of becoming extinct) individual in today’s academy. He is professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. At age 56, with a PhD from Stanford, he has written almost two dozen books. In his spare time, he is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He describes himself as a “cranky, liberal Democrat.” He is a black man who believes that affirmative action should be based on class, not race, and that woke racism hurts those it claims to help.

 

In this book, he argues that woke racism represents a third wave of anti-racism, “…from people wishing they hadn’t missed the late 1960s.” This wave, he claims, has assumed the traits of a religion, with white privilege as original sin. The third wave “has taken it from the concrete political activism of Martin Luther King to the faith-based commitments of a Martin Luther.” He castigates the proselytizers of this religion, “The Elect,” as “pious, unempirical virtue signalers.” They resemble, in his words, early Christians who “thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems…” Like other such movements, they appeal “to an idealized past, a fantastical future, and an indelibly polluted present.” For the Elect, black people’s noble past is Africa, a glorified future is one without hate, but the present consists of oppressors and oppressed. He finds the Elect’s sanctimony insulting to blacks, who are led to believe that victimhood is destiny and success is due to special treatment. When conservative blacks deny victimhood, they are smeared by the Elect: Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears is a “white” supremacist and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott is an “Uncle Tom.”

 

Mr. McWhorter does not deny the existence of racism. He writes: “Racism, in all its facets, is real, but since the late 1960s a contingent of black thinkers has tended to insist that things are as bad [today] as they were in 1940, leaving many black people who actually experienced Jim Crow a tad perplexed and even put off.” The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were positive steps toward racial equality, but they feed the argument “that black people could [no longer] have a basic pride in having come the whole way…” In the 1950s, black leaders criticized minstrel shows like Amos ‘n Andy for not showing successful black people Today, black leaders denigrate shows like Julia for not showing poverty and racism experienced by American blacks.

 

Interracial marriages in 1970 represented less than one percent of all marriages in the United States. Today, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, “about 17% of new marriages in the U.S. are interracial couples.” Blacks represent about 11% of college graduates today; fifty years ago, that number was less than five percent. These are facts ignored by the Elect. Ironically, colleges often teach black students a view of whites as oppressors. Mr. McWhorter quotes a Pew Research Center survey, which noted that nine percent of black high school students report experiencing racism regularly; “the number doubles among black college graduates to 17.5 percent.” “Half of black people with college degrees say that racism has made them fear for their safety; just a third of younger black students do.” 

 

It is the condescending attitude of the Elect toward blacks that troubles him most. He writes: “An enlightened America is supposed to hold a public figure accountable for her ideas. On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true – because she is black.” The claim that America is systemically racist ignores societal changes over the past several decades. Is there further to go? Of course. Are those like me brought up in educated white families privileged relative to blacks brought up in poverty? Of course. But should the focus be on pretending there has been no change or celebrating the fact that racism has declined over the past fifty years? Privilege is less a factor of race and more a matter of class.

 

McWhorter writes that if we could accept “three real-world efforts that combine political feasibility with effectiveness” that would address what ails America today: “There should be no war on drugs; society should get behind teaching everybody to read the right way; and we should make solid vocational training as easy to obtain as a college education.” In the book, he elaborates on all three. As to accusations that he is not “black enough:” “I know racism when I encounter it, even when it’s subtle. I have written about it often. And yet I still believe every word I am writing in this book.”

 

Professor McWhorter is better educated than most of his critics who comprises the “Elect,” which gives this short book heft at a time when emotion outranks composure. “Reason,” he writes, “must prevail. This is the heart of the enlightenment. The abolitionists knew it; Civil Rights leaders knew it; today’s liberals know it. Only the Elect propose that rationality, where it discomfits them, is mere ‘whiteness’.”

 

I encourage all my friends, especially those who consider themselves liberal Democrats, to read this book. Heather MacDonald, in City Journal, wrote words on science being viewed through the lens of “equity,” which apply to Mr. McWhorter’s book: “Step by step, we are shutting down the very processes of open inquiry and the cultivation of excellence that have freed humanity from so much unnecessary suffering.” Dispassionate discussion on race is being similarly treated. Anti-racism is racist, as it targets the group, not the individual. It is contrary to Martin Luther King’s plea that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Common sense and tolerance, with a focus on the person should be our guides regarding race, not the absolutism of religious puritanism. This is a powerful book.