Ironically, reading this shrewd exposé of woke as a religion tempts me to shout, "Manna from Heaven!" Taking aim at Ta-Nahisi Coates urging "the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage," (p. 131) McWhorter observes: "this is the divorcé who can't stand seeing his ex have a good time. To tar today's America as insufficiently aware of slavery is more about smugness and noble victimhood than forging something new and needed." Bullseye! Pragmatic as always, McWhorter outlines a three-point platform for attacking racism in his final chapter: (1) End the war on drugs (2) Teach reading with phonics (3) get rid of the notion that everyone has to go to college; respect and implement vocational training for poor people.
Hooray for the last one. Over a teaching career that started in 1985 and took me to good, bad, and ugly universities and colleges, I can say I wish some of my students, of all ethnicities, had chosen vocational training. Here in Germany, more than one student has confessed to wanting vocational training (but their mother insisted on university) or not liking reading much (but the family said a teaching degree is better than running a small fast food joint.)
John McWhorter's book diagnoses fundamentalism and fraudulence in so-called anti-racists, the school of Kendi and DiAngelo. Those who dare to disagree with such preachers are blasphemers, crucified on Twitter and banished from polite society. You can lose your job for pointing out that not all inequality is caused by racism.
But here I am waving around Woke Racism as if it were the Bible. Why? I could say because it's good news, and therefore like a gospel: Rendered inarticulate by the foolishness of questions like, "how have you experienced your white privilege?" I appreciate--actually, adore--McWhorter's precise, witty takedown of what's become an industry--as he's pointed out, DiAngelo and Kendi will never have to work again.
A loner in the midst of old friends riddled with what I see as misplaced guilt and what they see as a righteous reflection on the wounds of enslaved peoples, I meditate on the need of so many highly educated people--so many smart women!--to be insulted. I've lost count of friends who confide--as if divulging a sexual indiscretion--that some great-great-great ancestor owned slaves. So did Toussaint L'Overture, the liberator of Haiti. Whiteness is an accidental quality, not a sign of guilt. That haunted look, that "I've learned an awful lot about myself in the past few years" from educated middle-class white women isn't justified by what these women think of as America's original sin--slavery. Or their supposed racism because they thought of "flesh-colored" bandaids as "normal." Or even (gasp!) once mistook a Black store patron for a Black store clerk. Or, worse, actually used to harbor a racist notion or two, which they've vanquished but feel terrible about.
Puritanism's rearing its ugly head, the kind defined by that sublime satirist H.L. Mencken as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
Until I read Woke Racism, I'd been inclined to think of current race pieties as mass hysteria. The Salem witch trials, the McCarthy years, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two, the post-9/11 backlash against Arab-Americans: "wokeness" seems of a piece. But the religious element--yes! I'm hardly the first to see Robin DiAngelo as a direct descendent of Jonathan Edwards--my hat's off to the blogger who quipped "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Broad." Yes, she's the leader of the Elect--as Calvinist as they come: you're marked by original sin. You better suffer, white person, and you better spend your life repenting for a stain so deep it will never be washed out.
And Kendi--the smiling preacher in dreadlocks. John Milton knew his type when he criticized "blind mouths," clergy feeding on their flock, consuming them, instead of offering love, consolation, guidance. Kendi's a wolf in sheep's clothing; DiAngelo's marginally more obvious: she looks like she sucks lemons.
But dear Professor McWhorter, the Elect aren't just a religion. They're a cult. Let's de-program them! Here's the ticket:
My favorite lines in McWhorter's delightfully logical latest include:
For the Elect, "actual progress on race is not something to celebrate but to talk around. This is because, with progress, the Elect lose their sense of purpose. Note: What they are after is not money or power, but sheer purpose, in the basic sense of feeling like you matter and that your life has a meaningful agenda." (p. 40)
"The failure of so many thinkers to understand the difference between the effects of racism in the past and racism in the present has strangled discussions about race for decades" (p. 125)
"Ask whether microaggressions merit the same response as physical assault and the Elect do not receive this as a challenging query. To them, it is splitting hairs to taxonomize assault in this way." (p. 159)
Reading McWhorter's work, I'm struck by the uncommonness of common sense. His every line radiates common sense. But common sense remains so rare I was almost afraid, until he came along, that it was extinct. The Elect (or the mass hysterics) don't acknowledge his common sense. The lure of guilt--the seductive lure of being a flagellant--has such a hold on so many otherwise bright, productive people that common sense goes out the window.
Scratch a flagellant and you get a sadist--the folks beating themselves up for their whiteness are the same folks who Twitter-bully people out of careers.
Two days ago I tried to bring up Woke Racism with a friend--who, predictably, exploded: "Racism is real!" Followed by her certainty that the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial would have been different had the seventeen-year-old fool who never should have been allowed in the same room as a gun been Black. Followed by the notion that since the teenager got off, white supremacist vigilantes will run wild. Coleman Hughes just pointed out that Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, shot a cop in self-defense and was cleared of all charges--rightly so. Justice worked in the Rittenhouse case, and the kid wasn't a white supremacist either.
Nobody said racism isn't real. It's getting realer every day, fueled by folks who follow Kendi, DiAngelo, Coates, Hannah-Jones. Generalizing about whites and "whiteness"--I fail to see how this differs from the Nuremberg laws. Defunding the police? I can't think of a better way to destroy already-embattled crime-ridden impoverished neighborhoods.
The reality remains that U.S. gun laws allow teenagers and other lunatics access to weapons that go off by accident, Mommy. The faux vikings who stormed the U.S. Capitol aren't leading the pack--they're going to prison. The real racism that's still out there isn't an excuse to ignore what's happening in schools: that children shouldn't be separated by race in ways that--McWhorter points out--would have pleased that arch-racist, Strom Thurmond; that children shouldn't be asked to draw "their white skin" or listen to teachers reading them Not My Idea or Antiracist Baby. Followed by Ta-Nehisi Coates' heartless declaration of "no sympathy" for the white cops and firemen who died at the World Trade Center.
This isn't social or racial or any kind of justice, Coates and co.
Reason and wit are a balm. Thank you, John McWhorter.
P.S. May I touch the hem of your garment?
P.P.S. I wanna start a John McWhorter fan club. With T-shirts and everything. With autographs. With friendly tea parties and wine tastings (Covid-safe). Who wants to join?
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