John McWhorter Discusses Anti-Racism with Bill Maher

Linguistics Professor John McWhorter sat down with Bill Maher on a recent episode of Real Time to discuss "anti-racism." McWhorter describes himself as someone who is hearing things that don't make sense and his quest is to try to obsessively make sense of things like "anti-racism."  The interview was as intense as it was fast-moving. Several take-aways:

A) "Anti-racism" condescends to people who identify as "black," infantilizing them.

B) There is a great diversity of thought among those who identify as black, almost two-thirds of whom are middle class (or even higher earning), the majority of whom do not live in ongoing fear of being harassed or shot by the police,

C) None of this is to suggest that there isn't still racism, which needs to be addressed.

D) Wokeness is a religion where "whiteness" functions as "original sin" that afflicts even babies, a religion where Robin DiAngelo's misguided book, White Fragility is mistakenly being treated as "research" instead of second-rate literature that advocates for victimization;

E) People pretend to "atone" for "white privilege" by posting on FB that they are "doing the work." This solves nothing.

F) White Fragility is not representative of "the general black view of things."

G) There is no one "black view" of things - Also, "'Yes we can't'" has never been the slogan for black America and it's not now."

H) In the religion of Wokeness, advocates pretend that "racism has never been worse" than today, even in the 1960's and even during the 1850's. These are palpable untruths to any person who knows even a tiny bit of history. "Why is it un-black to address degree?"

I) It is childish for anyone to shut down opposing views to protect themselves from never being told that they are wrong. This "cathartic" approach will never change anything. We need meaningful engagement.

J) Social media has everyone "peeing in their pants," afraid to defer even minimally from Woke orthodoxy, which is making "mendacity" ubiquitous.

K) The fear of being honest and the fear to even tell a joke is "becoming almost everywhere. The only exceptions are people who are "weird like us and you don't mind being hated. But most people are not going to have that disease, and so we are stuck where we are."

If you'd like to follow John McWhorter, you can find him on his own Substack Website, It Bears Mentioning.   Also, McWhorter often joins Glenn Loury for conversation at The Glenn Show on Patreon. 

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The Poisonous Online Environment of Gen Z

Abigail Shrier discussed Gen Z with Harold Bursztajn, M.D., a psychiatrist. Bursztajn is concerned about Gen Z and he identifies smart phones and social media as two of the major culprits. How bad is this environment?

This generation seems helpless and hopeless. Why — I asked him — did this generation possess the highest recorded rates of anxiety, depression and suicide—and the lowest rates of sex or physical intimacy? These young Americans may be as radical as Flower Children, but they seem incapable of organizing a Woodstock or hosting a “Love In.” Where was their Kumbaya? What put the damper on their “Good Vibrations”?

Based on his thousands of hours administering psychotherapy to university students, Bursztajn believes it is the online life they lead which renders them anxious, unhappy, and emotionally malnourished. Social media trains them to divide humanity into allies and enemies. It offers them little basis for hope. Their online world is not a new-age vista of possibility, but rigid series of high-stakes social contests, in which players rack up “likes” and form alliances, but never actual friendships. “To the extent that you’re dealing with a culture of algorithms, not all things are possible—only the things in the algorithms,” he explained.

Bursztajn's conclusions thus mesh well with those of Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris, both of whom blame social media for siloed thinking and high rates of anxiety.

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Facebook Censors as “Hate Speech” Users’ Comments that Men Aren’t Women

This reminded me that FB is a filtered environment. Not only are many users afraid to weigh in on Wokeness issues for fear of being called names, but FB is actively censoring content. Too bad we don't know the algorithms FB uses, but this post for "Partners for Ethical Care" gives a recent example. Here's an excerpt:

In what has become an all-too-common event, a woman’s posts defending the existence of women as a category were removed because Facebook deemed them “hate speech.”

In response to a Partners for Ethical Care video showing autogynephilic men who claim to be lesbians, a woman commented, “Nothing biological or real about this male claiming to be a woman.” Facebook removed the comment, labeled it “hate speech,” and suspended the commenter’s Facebook privileges for 30 days.

Facebook is engaging in censorship of thought.

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