May 03, 2021 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian
As Critical Race Theory and “antiracism” have swept through academia and the media and corporations over the past few years, seemingly almost no one in those institutions is able to see the thinly concealed and vile racism embedded in these ideologies. Here is Ibram Kendi’s famous articulation of what he calls “antiracism”:
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
So in other words, simply treating black people as adults and expecting them to make it on their own in a non-discriminatory world is not an acceptable remedy. Instead, blacks are to be permanently dependent on assistance from the government and/or whites. As I put it in a post back in April 2019, the “antiracism” agenda evidences:
the utter contempt in which the self-anointed elites of our country hold members of minority groups, most particularly African Americans. Somehow, these elites — or at least some very substantial number of them — have decided that African Americans are not capable of accepting personal responsibility in life or of being treated like adults.
Meanwhile, Kendi gets rich off peddling his neo-racism, and plenty of others make various sorts of comfortable livings off the trendy ideology, whether as teachers or as diversity deans at colleges or as corporate diversity officers. But are there any black thinkers who are seeing through the smokescreen of Orwellian “antiracist” verbiage and calling out the ideology for just how destructive it is for the supposedly intended beneficiaries?
The answer is that there is a small but growing number, and they are deserving of greater exposure. So let me give a small shout out to some of the more prominent examples.
John McWhorter. McWhorter is a Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, and thus not really a political commentator in his day job. Nevertheless, he has become increasingly outspoken on the subjects of Critical Race Theory and “antiracism.” In January he started a new blog at Substack called “It Bears Mentioning,” which has been substantially devoted to these issues. In a post in March, I linked to a McWhorter column from February 28 with the title “Is it racist to expect black kids to do math for real?” With the passing weeks and months, McWhorter has been mincing fewer and fewer words. On April 22, it was “Attention to detail is white?” But my favorite, and the most emphatic yet, is his recent column from April 28, with the title “Do black people enjoy being told they are weak and dumb?” Excerpt: “This KenDiAngelonianism, in its infantilization of black people for purposes of white self-congratulation, is racist, as I have discussed in this space recently. Perhaps the only way to discourage its takeover of our educational institutions will be for black people to start protesting against it on those terms, because abjuring being racist is what The Elect consider a paramount, dealbreaker reason for living.”
Glenn Loury. Loury is a Professor of Economics at Brown, and a frequent collaborator with McWhorter on podcasts. On April 28, Bari Weiss published on her Substack a symposium on “systemic racism” to which Loury made a contribution. Excerpt: “Denouncing ‘systemic racism’ and invoking ‘white supremacy,’ and shouting ‘black lives matter,’ while 8,000 black homicides a year go unmentioned — these are maneuvers of avoidance and blame-shifting. The irony is that so many of us decry ‘systemic racism,’ even as we simultaneously demand that this very same ‘system’ deliver us.” He’s using gentler terminology than McWhorter, but the point is not very different.
Deroy Murdock. Murdock is a political commentator frequently published at outlets like National Review and Fox News. In a piece at Fox News yesterday, Murdock denounced the Democratic Party for not standing up against the racism of Critical Race Theory and “antiracist” ideology: “The Democrat Party has become America’s headquarters for racism and anti-Black bigotry. . . . To see what racism and race-baiting look like, peer no further than today’s Democrat-Left. From relentless obsession with critical race theory, baseless claims of ‘systemic racism,’ critical race theory brainwashing sessions, to delivery of health care based on skin color, Democrats and their ideological brethren see everything through black-and-white glasses.”
Robert Woodson and 1776 Unites. A long-time civil rights activist and author (although not affiliated with any university as far as I know), Woodson has his own organization called the Woodson Center to promote his ideas. In 2020 he founded something called 1776 Unites, which describes itself as follows: “Radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic, we hope to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within, and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.” The website of 1776 Unites lists some nineteen scholars affiliated with the effort, including names like McWhorter and Loury and also many others you may have heard of like Carol Swain, Coleman Hughes, Jason Hill and Wilfred Reilly.
Unnamed young black woman. Steven Hayward at PowerLine today links to a video clip of a young black woman (I don’t know her name) reacting to a self-righteous video from progressive activist Alissa Milano. Milano begins her video saying “For those of us who are not black men, imagine watching the news and seeing . . .” The young black woman responds with remarks that include: “Imagine being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal on TV are one and the same because you look alike. Imagine being told by society that white people can be all that they can be, but you as a black man the content of your character is completely irrelevant and you are the color of your skin and that is all you will ever be. Imagine being told that you can’t figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. . . .” Well done, young woman!
For now, the “antiracists” and Critical Race Theorists may seem to be ascendant. But that’s only because most of the normal people haven’t been paying attention. It will only take a critical mass of opposition to push back, and the whole thing could crumble rather quickly.
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