John McWorter Draws a Line in the Sand When Ibram X. Kendi Publicly Labels his Ideas “Racist.”

One of the things I find most disturbing about "anti-racists" is their demand that you must either agree to everything they say or else you are a "racist." Popular authors Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo claim that if you are not an "anti-racist" you are a racist. There are only two options. Thus speak the anti-racists.  This false dilemma, this unjustified dichotomy, is just "because."

"Anti-racism" is not the opposite of racism, despite the misleading nomenclature. It is virulent new form of racism. To pull off this minor miracle of creativity, the "anti-racists" have invoked a new expansive definition of "racism" that has nothing to do with specific unfair attitudes or behavior of specific people. The "anti-racists" invoke a Manichean claim that it is OK to judge people as good and bad (respectively Blacks and whites) based on immutable physical appearance, just because. In doing this, they are dusting off that old disreputable idea that melanin should serve as a guilt barometer. This is something they have in common with racists of the Civil War and Jim Crow eras, although the new barometer is upside-down.

This "anti-racist" formula has worked all too well for the past several years. Well-meaning people who fervently disagree with this "anti-racist" claim, however, including the specific claim that "all white people are racist," are being held emotional hostage. They are afraid to speak up, to disagree in public places. It is truly bizarre to see so many people who disagree with these "anti-racist" claims who are afraid to speak up. I know this from numerous private conversations. It's starting to look like many religions, where the preachers preach at the flock and members of the flock merely nod their heads, even thought they know in every bone of their bodies that the Earth is not 6,000 years old, that virgins don't have babies and that (an example from my Catholic upbringing) eating the host is not literally eating bloody muscles and capillaries. Members of the flock sat in total silence when the NYT promoted claims that the American Revolution was primarily for the purpose of promoting slavery, a central claim of "The 1619 Project."

So this is where we are: the preachers are preaching and members of the flock keep sitting silently because they are afraid of going to "anti-racist" hell. For them, hell is what would happen is they were publicly called "racist."  Thus, members of the flock will sit in paralyzed silence, even when the anti-racists call all "white" people and their Black intellectual allies "racist" no matter how exemplary their lives have been. Isn't that weird? "White" people are already being called racists as a group merely by their skin color, yet they fear being called "racist" as individuals. And what drives this fear is, ironically, that they hate racism. This is stranger than any fiction any creative writer could concoct. These "anti-racist" threats of name-calling are successfully turning many people into Zombies (this reminds me of how many types of wasps sting and zombify other bugs to use as hatcheries). After getting stung by the threat of being called "racists," the fearful zombified flock is willing to sit in silence even when the "anti-racists" make patently false claims that no racial progress has occurred since 1619, since the Civil War or since the Civil Rights era.  They sit in silence while the "anti-racists" ridicule Martin Luther King's idea that we should not be judged by the color of our skin, but only by the content of character.

Once this creepy dynamic settled into place, anti-racists, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, began getting free rides from individuals who knew better but who were afraid to speak out. More troublesome, the anti-racists' fact-free and oftentimes false diatribes also began getting luxury free rides from corporate HR departments, government agencies (and here) and many members of our sense-making institutions, including left-leaning legacy media. In addition to securing the silence of people who disagree under threat of being called names, the "anti-racists" employ another big weapon: the rage of Woke mobs who are willing to destroy the careers of anyone who dares to dissent (recent example).

Linguist John McWhorter has not been afraid to call out the anti-racists.  He has done this in many places, including his article in The Atlantic,  "The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility: The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people." McWorther, a professor of linguistics, has taken a lot of flack from the far left for repeatedly calling out that the Emperor Has No Clothes.

McWhorter had more than his fill, however, when Ibram X. Kendi recently and publicly called McWhorter's ideas "racist."  Kendi has made dozens of claims that should be vigorously scrutinized by academics, book reviewers and the general public, but he has been surfing on the waves of fearful silence. That silence meant that the normally unflappable McWhorter had to fend for himself.  He decided it was time to push back dramatically, in a public way. Hence these excerpts from the November 23, 2020 episode of The Glenn Show with Glenn Loury:

Continue ReadingJohn McWorter Draws a Line in the Sand When Ibram X. Kendi Publicly Labels his Ideas “Racist.”

Professor Dorian Abbott of the University of Chicago Threatened for Expressing Dissent over DEI Policy

What is a hero?  There are many types.  One type of hero is someone who steps up to do what is right and say what is true knowing that the consequences will be painful and potentially damaging to one's livelihood.  The scene is the University of Chicago, which issued the strongly worded "Chicago Statement" in 2015. Here is an excerpt:

“Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn . . . . [I]t is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”

I learned of the story of Geophysics Professor Abbott through a series of tweets by Colin Wright. Abbot's crime was to question his department's DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies. His concerns included the following:

My basic points are: (1) We need to think through the consequences of DEI efforts to make sure they aren’t hurting promising scientists of all demographics, (2) There are major societal problems that we should try to fix as a society as well as by giving our own time and money off campus, but adjusting departmental ratios at elite universities does not really address them, and (3) the current academic climate is making it extremely difficult for people with dissenting viewpoints to voice their opinions.

Abbot's concerns resulted in a letter to Geophysics Department signed by 130 graduate students and post-docs demanding that Abbott be stripped  of all titles, courses, and privileges. Those signing the letter claimed that Abbot's opinions "threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups" and are "an aggressive act." They issued 11 absurd demands that, again, include a demand that the University ruin Professor Abbott's career. Here is the starting point (click on this link to jump in):

Professor Abbott detailed events of Mid-November in this document.  Here's an excerpt from his report:

On Saturday, 11/14/20, friends started telling me that there were a large number of people on Twitter misrepresenting what I was arguing, saying untrue things about me, and even demanding that I be fired. One friend noted that there were a number of tweets using the logic: “I don’t feel safe when you object to my premises, therefore you cannot object to my premises on campus.” I found this very upsetting because it confirmed my fear that certain people are exploiting the language of personal trauma to silence anyone with dissenting opinions on these issues.

Analysis: I believe that this situation was caused by the collision of two different strongly held worldviews. I subscribe to the traditional University of Chicago perspective, as outlined recently in what has become known as the Chicago Statement. In this view academic freedom and the tolerance of dissenting views are given prominence. The reason for this is that it is important for promoting the discovery of new knowledge, which is the main purpose of a modern university. I and many other faculty specifically chose to work at the University of Chicago in part because it has always affirmed this attitude. The alternative viewpoint is that certain groups feel inherently threatened on campus, and need to be protected from anything that might make them feel unsafe or happy to pursue their work. I am sympathetic to this viewpoint and agree in some cases, such as general department and classroom climate, but I feel that it cannot be applied to intellectual discussions. The reason is that it is associated with the type of logic noted above, in which the position is taken: “I don’t feel safe when you object to my premises, therefore you cannot object to my premises on campus.” This is similar to what philosophers call “begging the question,” or “assuming the answer,” and obviously is not an effective way to resolve an intellectual dispute correctly.

I invite you to click on these links and to keep following this story to see whether the University of Chicago will honor its stated principles that universities must always be places where dissent will always be invited.

Continue ReadingProfessor Dorian Abbott of the University of Chicago Threatened for Expressing Dissent over DEI Policy

People Who Refuse to Read What J. K. Rowling Writes about People Who are Transgender Hate Her for her Writings.

This Tweet and others by John Cleese on transgender issues are eye-opening and raise an important point. This can be confirmed quickly by cruising Twitter. Numerous people refuse to read what J. K. Rowling writes about people who are transgender, yet they hate her for what she supposedly said. This is even more distressing than the large number of people who read only headlines before responding to posts or sharing the entire article. "59 percent of all links shared on social networks aren’t actually clicked on at all, implying the majority of article shares aren’t based on actual reading." I've seen it repeatedly on Twitter that Woke Folk claim that Rowling has said things that she never said.  Tweets by or about Abigail Shrier draw hate from the same crowd (and from large media outlets), most of whom claim that she is "anti trans," when 1) there is no evidence of this and 2) Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage, focuses only on teenagers who are undergoing surgery and hormone treatment based upon self-diagnosis and without the benefit of any counseling in an attempt to change their gender. 

Continue ReadingPeople Who Refuse to Read What J. K. Rowling Writes about People Who are Transgender Hate Her for her Writings.

Andrew Sullivan: People are Far More Diverse than Colors

Andrew Sullivan identifies one of the main problems with Wokeness in his article, "The Minorities Within Minorities: And how they can help us revive liberal democracy." This excerpt is from Sullivan's excellent independent Substack column, The Weekly Dish:

I see much of the woke left as deeply threatening to some of my core identities: their hostility to religious freedom, their redefinition of my sexual orientation into a gender preference, their instant judgment of a person by the color of their skin or their maleness. . . . Once you see everything through the prism of crude identity, and reduce everyone to socially constructed molecules in racial hierarchies of various kinds, this is the kind of analysis you get. But what these left and right-tribalists obscure or cannot see is we’re talking about a spectrum of countless, unique human beings here, with individual identities and views formed by a cascade of different life experiences and backgrounds. Things are far, far more complicated and interesting than these crude ideologies can explain.

After publishing the above I spotted Andrew Sullivan's tweet summarizing his article:

Minorities add complexity to America but America adds complexity to them in return. That's why many Americans of countless complicated identities voted this year as individuals and as unhyphenated citizens.

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Anarchists = BLM Minus Black People

From the Los Angeles Times article, "Portland’s anarchists say they support racial justice. Black activists want nothing to do with them":

The election of Biden has only antagonized the anarchists — and exposed their differences with the Black activists they claim to support.

Black activists and community leaders, who generally view the defeat of Trump as an opportunity for change within the system, said the anarchists are hijacking the movement and undermining the push for racial justice by continuing to commit violence.

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