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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Democrat Media Goes Radio-Silent after Joe Biden Adopts Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy

The content of this thread following Glenn Greenwald's Tweet is exactly what we should expect to get more of as long as so many of us continue relishing two-party tribalism rather than engaging in nuanced heterodox thinking. Read the thread and you will find cheap theater staged by Rachel Maddow and AOC on this issue. Too many of us are working in overtime to score cheap political points instead of working to have meaningful discussions regarding complex issues. The HxA way would be a good start.  

Looking back  only 18 months . . .

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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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