McWhorter and The Strawman

Columbia English prof John McWhorter took on a big, and difficult, subject. He did so because he sees the problems and can’t be so easily dismissed.

A white version of this would be blithely dismissed as racist.

But he can, and will, still be dismissed. It just take one more step when it comes from a black man by imputing a more personally denigrating claim.

I will be dismissed instead as self-hating by a certain crowd.

McWhorter took on racism. He wrote a book about it, The Elect: Neoracists Posting As Antiracists and Their Threat to a Progressive America, and he provided an excerpt of his book at Persuasion.

One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.

He goes on to address a broad swathe of the issue, from its internal ideological contradictions to its diminishment of black expectations, as if black people can never be as accomplished as white people because of the oppression of racism, and so they shouldn’t bother trying. The former informs the latter; the latter informs people like McWhorter, and the handful of other black intellectuals who refuse to spend their lives and dedicate their children to being victims of white oppression in perpetuity.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me wanted to teach his son that America is set against him; I want to teach my kids the reality of their lives in the 21st rather than early-to-mid-20th century. Lord forbid my daughters internalize a pathetic—yes, absolutely pathetic in all of the resonances of that word—sense that what makes them interesting is what other people think of them, or don’t.

On rare occasion, I use this space to tell readers to go read something else because it’s more important than anything they’ll read here. Today is such an occasion. Please read the excerpt from John McWhorter’s book. You may not agree with every idea. You may nitpick his word choice. You may think he put something in, or left something out. You don’t have to find it perfect to appreciate his meaning.

As the book title suggests, and as the excerpt eventually gets to, McWhorter confronts the language problem that seems to persistently plague discussion of these extremely important issues.

One more thing: We need a crisper label for the problematic folk. I will not title them “Social Justice Warriors.” That, and other labels such as “the Woke Mob” are unsuitably dismissive. One of the key insights I hope to get across is that most of these people are not zealots. They are your neighbor, your friend, possibly even your offspring. They are friendly school principals, people who work quietly in publishing, lawyer pals. Heavy readers, good cooks, musicians. It’s just that sadly, what they become, solely on this narrow but impactful range of issues, is inquisitors.

This is the Orwell Problem, that without word to express ideas, they can’t be conveyed or considered. Over the past few years, we’ve seen words become untethered from any cognizable definition. We’ve seen words banned, regardless of context, and even words that sound somewhat close to banned words are forbidden to be uttered. And we’ve seen new words and phrases arise and, swiftly, be dismissed as pejoratives. Sure, the words can still be used, but will immediately shut down discussions as being the word choice of the other tribe. But then, without a word, how can ideas be conveyed?

McWhorter adopts the term “The Elect.”

We will term these people The Elect. They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons—a gift for empathy, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.

“The Elect” is also good in implying a certain smugness, which is sadly accurate as a depiction. Of course, most of them will resist the charge.

Whether “The Elect” will have any traction has yet to be seen. It lacks the directness of the “woke,” a word created by The Elect to describe their having achieved the pinnacle of wisdom that all of humanity has missed until now, that they have finally, finally, awoken to the Truth. And when it was adopted by their critics, it was dismissed as just another ad hominem seized by the racists, sexists and self-loathing black people to attack them.

And unsurprisingly, McWhorter was right about most of them, whatever we call them, resisting the charge.

This is third-rate strawmanning and hyperbole. This conversation needs nuance desperately and this offers absolutely none.

— Cathy Reisenwitz (@CathyReisenwitz) February 8, 2021

By taking on an issue of such staggering scope and breadth, it was inevitable that he would be accused of “strawmanning,” the logical fallacy of creating a flawed argument for your adversary in order to knock it down. There are millions of people who are engaged in pretending to lead this secular religion or being adherents, to some greater or lesser extent, each of whom believes their personal version of woke is the real and correct one. It’s impossible to address every conceivable variation, which is ironic given that how fundamental stereotypes of both oppressed and oppressors factors into their belief system.

By trying to address the overarching issue, McWhorter not only left himself exposed as a self-hating black man, but as an intellectual fraud who resorts to strawmanning and hyperbole to make his claim.

It forces us to spend endless amounts of time listening to nonsense presented as wisdom, and pretend to like it.

I’ve never pretended to like it. I never liked it. I understood it was nonsense from the outset, and said so, which has made me a pariah to those who are absolutely certain they are better, smarter, more decent, more moral than I am, and accordingly dismiss me. Much as I hoped I might use reason to persuade people to think, I knew that beliefs can’t be changed by reason. Still, I very much appreciate John McWhorter’s effort to do so, and perhaps he will have greater success. Both the eradication of racism and the progress of society depend on our ability to recognize and reject this latest false god.