John McWhorter is now writing several times per week at the New York Times. I can only assume that the NYT hired McWhorter to help deprogram them, to save from their self-induced immersion in the cult that is “antiracism.” I’d like to be the fly on the wall when NYT staffers discuss this new hire among themselves. I expect that it would be, in equal parts, entertaining and distressing. But the good guys won this battle, and McWhorter has been handed a turbo-charged megaphone for his eloquent and witty brand of common sense.
Here is an excerpt from one of McWhorter’s early columns at the NYT. The title is “The Performative Antiracism of Black Students at the U. of Wisconsin.”
Treating a people with dignity requires not only listening closely and sympathetically to their grievances, but being able to take a deep breath and call them out on aspects of those grievances that don’t make sense. And there will be some, unless those airing the grievance are fictional creations instead of human beings.
On race, we should assess, look ahead rather than backward, channel our thoughts and feelings with cortex rather than brain stem, and think slow rather than fast — and the notion that this counsel is “white” is science fiction. That goes for both protesters and those whom they protest at. Instead, too much of what passes as enlightenment on race these days involves merely pretending that something makes sense out of fear.
