A Few Questions about Race

I enthusiastically support Glenn Loury's Substack. He often discusses race issues with John McWhorter. Glenn invited questions for their upcoming question and answer session. Here is my question. I hope they have time to address it on their Q & A:

Here’s a hypothetical for the two of you.

Assume that God visits the United States next Tuesday. After sizing things up, God performs a miracle. He/She/They decide to make it impossible for anyone to know the “race” of anyone else. There are no longer any physical or historical ways to determine the “race” of any people you meet. Two questions: What % of people would like this new world? What % would be distressed because they no longer have a quick proxy for judging the character of others? I suspect that some people doing DEI work will get upset because they will lose their jobs. Some people will get busy trying to determine new immutable characteristics upon which to judge the characteristics of other people—perhaps astrology and phrenology theories will again flourish. In the midst of all this panic, distress and commotion of this non-racial reckoning, the news media reports that someone (race unknown) murders 15 people (race unknown). Many people watching the news reports don’t know whether to give a shit in the absence of “racial” information.

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The Fictions Demanded by the Political Far Left

John McWhorter lists some today's most prominent fictions pushed by the political far left in his NYT article: "Here’s a Fact: We’re Routinely Asked to Use Leftist Fictions."

These days, an aroma of delusion lingers, with ideas presented to us from a supposedly brave new world that is, in reality, patently nonsensical. Yet we are expected to pretend otherwise. To point out the nakedness of the emperor is the height of impropriety, and I suspect that the sheer degree to which we are asked to engage in this dissimulation will go down as a hallmark of the era: Do you believe that a commitment to diversity should be crucial to the evaluation of a candidate for a physics professorship? Do you believe that it’s mission-critical for doctors to describe people in particular danger of contracting certain diseases not as “vulnerable (or disadvantaged)” but as “oppressed (or made vulnerable or disenfranchised)”? Do you believe that being “diverse” does not make an applicant to a selective college or university more likely to be admitted?

In some circles these days, you are supposed to say you do.

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Well-Connected Activists on the Political Left Attack Glenn Greenwald for Forming an Interracial Family Through Adoption

Interracial adoption should be celebrated.  No parent should be treated like Glenn Greenwald was treated after giving an interview about the importance of fatherhood. He discussed the joys of adopting two children with his Brazilian husband. In the video, he tells the story about what happened following this benign and joyful conversation about fatherhood.

I'm certain that my feelings about this topic are intensified by the fact that I am an adoptive parent of two children who were born in another part of the world. They are strong young women, but I will always be ferociously protective of them.  On many occasions I've written about the racist venom increasingly coming from many on the political left. I often see it on Twitter, unapologetic and bold. I've seen a ton of it in training materials leaked from schools and corporations (sometimes it goes under the name of CRT, but not always).  I'm glad that Glenn Greenwald has spoken out so eloquently in this video and I applaud the ways in which he has framed the issues.

Originally, it was right-wingers who railed against interracial families. Having apparently learned nothing at all, more than a few left wingers have taken up this deplorable cause--it's like their brains were transported 70 years back in time. The two main culprits in this case are Rafael Shimunov and Wagatwe Wanjuki, both of them intricately connected to many liberal organizations, including universities. They boldly spewed their racist poison to their online communities, presumably including many people involved in these left-leaning organizations. Shimunov issued a half-assed apology after learning that Greenwald put Shimunov's conduct under the spotlight. Wagatwe has not retracted any of her postings and has not apologized.  Part of this story also mentions deplorable tweets written by best-selling author Ibram Kendi (How to be an Antiracist), attacking Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation process. Her sin was the same as Greenwald's: she had an interracial family.  Kendi has not retracted his disgusting tweets and has not apologized.

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WP: Now that We Think About it . . . There’s No Evidence that Rittenhouse was a White Supremicist

The WP apparently trying to mitigate damages in the libel suit they are now apparently worrying about. Responsible professional journalism would have been evidence-based from the very beginning. I probably need to add that I'm no fan of Kyle Rittenhouse. He is not any sort of hero to me. I write this as someone who has seen the widespread decline in the the ability of legacy news outlets that I formerly trusted.

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Niall Ferguson Explains Why He is Helping to Create a New College

Niall Ferguson's article at Bloomberg is titled, "I'm Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken: Institutions dedicated to the search for truth have ossified into havens for liberal intolerance and administrative overreach."

In Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, 62% of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented them from saying things they believed, up from 55% in 2019, while 41% were reluctant to discuss politics in a classroom, up from 32% in 2019. Some 60% of students said they were reluctant to speak up in class because they were concerned other students would criticize their views as being offensive.

Such anxieties are far from groundless. According to a nationwide survey of a thousand undergraduates by the Challey Institute for Global Innovation, 85% of self-described liberal students would report a professor to the university if the professor said something that they found offensive, while 76% would report another student.

. . . . The number of scholars targeted for their speech has risen dramatically since 2015, according to research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. FIRE has logged 426 incidents since 2015. Just under three-quarters of them resulted in some kind of sanction — including an investigation alone or voluntary resignation — against the scholar. Such efforts to restrict free speech usually originate with “progressive” student groups, but often find support from left-leaning faculty members and are encouraged by college administrators, who tend (as Sam Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College demonstrated, and as his own subsequent experience confirmed) to be even further to the left than professors. There are also attacks on academic freedom from the right, which FIRE challenges.

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