TRIGGERnometry - Is ＂Anti-Racism＂ Helping Black People？ - John McWhorter

00:00:00.000 Here we are in a situation where, again, intelligent people are, frankly, pretending that we still

00:00:08.260 live in an America that's defined by the stain of racism in a way that if our grandparents

00:00:13.380 could hear us talking, they would be appalled that we would compare ourselves to them.

00:00:22.920 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:25.740 I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:27.160 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:28.260 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:34.340 Our brilliant guest today is making a lot of waves at the moment.

00:00:37.420 He is an associate professor at Columbia University and author of Woke Racism.

00:00:41.440 John McWhorter, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:43.500 Thanks for having me.

00:00:44.880 It's a great pleasure to have you, John.

00:00:46.520 You've written a book that, as I said, is making a lot of waves at the moment.

00:00:50.900 A lot of our audience are big fans of yours and know who you are,

00:00:53.840 but there will be also a lot of people, particularly here in the UK,

00:00:56.040 who are less familiar with your work.

00:00:59.480 Tell everybody a little bit about your story.

00:01:01.620 Who are you?

00:01:02.420 How are you where you are?

00:01:03.460 What has been the journey through life

00:01:04.820 that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:01:07.560 Well, actually, what I am is I study academic linguistics.

00:01:10.960 I'm a linguist at Columbia University.

00:01:13.860 And the linguistics work that I do

00:01:16.340 is not usually about race issues.

00:01:19.340 I'm not somebody who only studies black English or the like.

00:01:22.460 I'm just a linguistics nerd, really.

00:01:25.100 but I have developed an alternate commitment to making certain arguments about race because I

00:01:32.000 think that the race debate in our country and I think often in yours as well is based less on

00:01:38.700 actually helping people than on a certain kind of performance and I'm worried that things have

00:01:43.400 gone so far in that direction that I feel like I need to speak up because I feel that my views on

00:01:50.540 these things are shared by an awful lot of other Black people. So the idea is not for me to tilt

00:01:56.280 at windmills and be an eccentric, but I feel like a certain on-the-ground view about what will help

00:02:02.900 Black America doesn't get represented because of a certain orthodoxy that is typical of two places,

00:02:10.180 which are only a subset of society, academia and the media. So really what I am is a language geek

00:02:19.260 and I get detoured by also wearing another hat

00:02:24.960 as a race commentator, which I just sense as a duty

00:02:27.720 because I feel that a lot of people who feel the way I do

00:02:30.920 refrain from saying these things in public

00:02:33.500 because they're afraid of getting their feelings hurt.

00:02:36.340 I'm not, and so here we are.

00:02:38.680 That's my story.

00:02:40.300 It's interesting.

00:02:41.220 Let me ask you this because as a fellow linguistic nerd,

00:02:43.720 I ran my own translation business for about 10 years,

00:02:47.040 then became a stand-up comedian.

00:02:48.560 another thing where words are very important and how you phrase things is very important

00:02:52.240 and one of the reasons i've been concerned about you know we can talk about wokeness which we're

00:02:57.380 moving away from talking about quite so much but this overall trend there has been something quite

00:03:02.260 pernicious happening in terms of the language that is used around all of this stuff have you

00:03:07.140 note is that one of the ways you kind of got into you started or no it was purely the the race thing

00:03:12.440 I don't make that much sense. No, definitely. There are linguistic aspects to this, but the link between linguist me and race me is very thin. So yeah, obviously there are language issues and people say, well, you know, John, as a linguist, what do you think of the evolution of the term woke, etc.?

00:03:31.840 And what I'm quietly thinking is it has nothing to do with my linguistics training. I would think the same thing if I were an architect. And so, no, it's not that I was dismayed by the language people use talking about race. I was dismayed by what people say about race and what it means for society. And that was quite distinct from me thinking about adverbs and suffixes and things like that. Really very little relationship between the two things.

00:03:56.960 And John, what was a moment for you where you felt compelled to write this book and before that compelled to make your voice heard?

00:04:04.560 Well, it was a gradual story. And, you know, it's at the point I'm 56.

00:04:09.220 And so the story is too long to be told because, you know, nobody cares but me.

00:04:13.940 But in the early 90s, when I was in my 20s, my general feeling was that black America had come a very, very long way since the mid 60s,

00:04:24.160 the large civil rights victories that happened then. I thought, there are still things that

00:04:28.980 need to be done, but miracles have happened over the past 25 years, and you should be thankful for

00:04:33.980 it. Gradually, I realized that that was not what the educated Black person was supposed to think,

00:04:39.880 and I noticed that many people were nauseated by my sense that there was any cause for celebration,

00:04:46.160 that I didn't think of myself as living in the same America as 1960, except that maybe manners

00:04:52.320 had changed. I didn't like that. I didn't understand why I was having so many unpleasant

00:04:57.760 conversations. And if anything differentiated me from some others in that situation, and I was

00:05:04.400 hardly alone, it's that I thought what really gets me is that the people who refuse to admit

00:05:10.180 that there's been real progress, and to feel it, and to live it, and to stop talking as if it's

00:05:15.260 1960. The people like this are intelligent, and they're sane, and they're nice. I wasn't inclined

00:05:22.760 to think these people are crazy. I wasn't inclined to think these people are trying to line their

00:05:27.940 pockets or manipulate white people. I thought, no, they're normal. And I thought, and so am I. 0.96

00:05:32.080 What is creating the difference in view here? And so I just started analyzing it analytically,

00:05:36.940 maybe in the same way as I was trained as a linguist to analyze language analytically. But

00:05:41.180 it wasn't the way people were talking about race. It was what they were saying about it and how they

00:05:45.700 felt. And so one thing led to another, and a lot of it was serendipity, but I wound up writing a

00:05:52.400 book called Losing the Race in 2000 that started with a piece that I wrote for a kind of proto-blog

00:06:00.880 site, which I only wrote because I happened to be working in linguistics on my first language

00:06:06.960 books for the public with a publisher that happened to have that blog site. All of it just,

00:06:11.220 you know, one thing leads to another and you just have to basically show up. But that book,

00:06:15.520 Losing the Race, was a minor bestseller and it put me on the map as the contrarian, one of the 0.96

00:06:21.880 contrarians to go to about race. And much to my surprise, over the past 21 years, people are still

00:06:27.280 asking me my views about those things. And so I end up having two jobs and I've kept up with

00:06:32.920 the linguistics, but, you know, Constantine, as you'll understand, that is not something the

00:06:36.980 general public is usually as interested in as hot button issues like race. And so I do the

00:06:41.500 linguistics sort of in private, and then the race stuff gets out there more. So it was a random

00:06:48.200 story based on my just not liking disorder. Linguistics is about problem solving. For me,

00:06:55.260 race is about problem solving. And for me, the idea that I was supposed to think that I'm living

00:07:00.580 in 1960, when it was 1991, was a problem to be solved. And John, you say it was a problem to be

00:07:08.480 solved. Dare I say it, that the problem has got significantly worse since 1991. Yeah, it has. And

00:07:16.460 I really regret that. When Barack Obama was elected, I thought that it was an indication that

00:07:23.640 yes, racism exists, but something is really significant when a black man can be elected 0.87

00:07:29.520 president and twice. It didn't have the effect that it should have because around the same time,

00:07:34.860 social media became default. And social media whips people up into extremist and tribalist

00:07:40.880 views. And that's both on the right and on the left. And part of that was calling attention to

00:07:47.180 the relationship between Black people and the cops, which is important, but it was brought

00:07:52.420 to attention in a rather distorted way with this new social media. And as a result, here we are in

00:07:58.780 a situation where, again, intelligent people are frankly pretending that we still live in an

00:08:06.500 America that's defined by the stain of racism in a way that if our grandparents could hear us

00:08:11.780 talking, they would be appalled that we would compare ourselves with them. And social media

00:08:16.380 does not help. The pandemic has certainly brought people inside of themselves and whipped groups up

00:08:22.180 together because everybody was lonely. So yeah, it hasn't changed that much. I'm sad to think that

00:08:28.260 I know. I don't even have to wonder. There are 22, 23-year-old middle-class educated Black people now who are in college wondering why they're having unpleasant conversations with people who refuse to admit anything has changed.

00:08:42.100 My friend and colleague, Coleman Hughes, who is not yet 30 and has the same feelings I do, had that experience. He basically had the same experience that I had where he understands that things are so different now that we need to ask a whole different set of questions and was told by a great many people that he was a moral pervert for thinking so. He's having the same experience I had when I was his age. So, no, it hasn't changed the way I wish it had.

00:09:07.440 Yeah, and John, we've had the Coleman Hughes, your friend Glenn Lowry, Larry Elder, we've had all the people here in the UK, we've spoken to former England footballer John Barnes. We've talked about this issue a lot, because we're genuinely curious, and we're trying to understand. But I suppose there comes a point, and I feel that certainly Francis and I have reached it, where we kind of know where we stand, and the information is out there if you want to.

00:09:33.540 You can go and watch our interviews.

00:09:35.080 You can go and watch a bunch of other stuff.

00:09:37.220 But what do we do about this?

00:09:39.520 What do we actually do to improve?

00:09:41.480 Because I think you're right.

00:09:42.880 Social media is the thing that has made it so much worse and probably changed the direction

00:09:48.580 of travel.

00:09:49.160 I think we were doing better and better.

00:09:50.920 And then social media came in.

00:09:52.380 Would you agree with that?

00:09:53.660 Definitely.

00:09:54.420 Yeah.

00:09:54.680 Right.

00:09:55.420 So what the hell do we, other than smashing Twitter to pieces, which I think we'd all

00:10:01.020 happily do at this point, what else do we do?

00:10:03.540 Well, it's at the point where if you sense that somebody is exaggerating, you have to stop. I don't mean you two personally, but one has to stop thinking that there must be something wrong with you.

00:10:16.000 And if somebody is exaggerating about race, chances are that that is true. And socially, maybe you have to pretend to agree. Socially, maybe you can step around that person. But that person who's talking about white privilege and white supremacy as if it was 100 years ago and refuses to budge, that kind of person, we have to step around them. And that's a lot of what woke racism is about.

00:10:38.580 You can't engage somebody on that because they've built their whole identity around it. The white ones and the black ones. Step around them. You can't let them run the show. You have to get used to telling them no when they want to turn an institution upside down. 1.00

00:10:50.960 And I think we need to focus on the things that black people actually need, which I'm afraid are less charismatic to talk about than talking about something as abstract as eliminating white supremacy.

00:11:03.740 But that's why in the book I write about ending the war on drugs, on promoting vocational education in a new way, on making sure that poor black kids are actually taught to read properly, which is more important than it sounds.

00:11:15.980 Those are the things that will turn things around down on the ground in the real world, which is really different from this prayer circle pseudo Marxist routine that we're being taught has to happen before anything real goes on.

00:11:30.640 Many people insist, and this is people from ordinary people who just watch a lot of TV to people who read too many books and everything in between. People think we must have this conversation where white people acknowledge before anything can happen. No, that's not true. That's something that we're told, but that's hardly a settled question.

00:11:50.960 how much do people need to realize that's not how civil rights activism has ever worked in the past

00:11:56.060 basically what white people need to know they know it's at the point where now it's time to

00:12:00.980 go out in the world and do the hard stuff that isn't as much fun as wagging fingers in people's

00:12:06.020 faces and that's what i'm trying to get at in woke racism but this is a problem isn't it john

00:12:12.240 this idea that you know that you can these people what they do is they go on social media and they

00:12:20.240 preach and they say about, you know, how we need to reach this new utopia. But nobody wants to do

00:12:26.160 the hard work. Very few people want to go into a classroom in the inner city where it's, and

00:12:31.600 having done it myself, where it's really tough to teach and you don't get a lot of money for it.

00:12:37.300 Or, you know, you go and work on things like initiatives like knife crime. You go and become

00:12:42.540 a youth worker. These are difficult things to do. It's far easier to go on social media and just say

00:12:49.200 what a great person you are and how you want a rainbow in every classroom yeah i mean i think

00:12:55.020 a lot of people's view on this is that it'll be easier to teach those kids in the classroom

00:13:00.700 if you eliminate white supremacy by white people learning their complicity in the way things are

00:13:07.320 now and and notice there's an ellipsis there most people would be hard pressed to say and what

00:13:13.080 what after this realization comes what are you saying they're going to do and are you talking

00:13:17.740 about something that would take a hundred years because that's remarkably unimaginative. And

00:13:21.960 that's the problem. So yes, people like to go on Twitter and strike poses showing that they're

00:13:28.180 good people, but that's different from actually facing and dealing with what conditions are

00:13:35.320 actually like out there. And let's say that those conditions are there because of something you can

00:13:38.780 call systemic racism, but often undoing what's going on is not going to be a matter of changing

00:13:45.780 something called racism, which I think a lot of people would enjoy because it feels like you're

00:13:50.980 slapping a bigot in the face. Really, society is more complicated than that. And that's the

00:13:56.160 problem. The Twitter version of all of this can't acknowledge those complexities.

00:14:01.320 And speaking of complexities, you just mentioned the term systemic racism there.

00:14:05.600 Does it exist? Do you think there are areas of society, particularly in the United States,

00:14:12.160 where there are systemic structures that treat different races differently?

00:14:17.480 Yeah, there are things that it's harder to do if you are black

00:14:23.020 because of certain things that are baked into the system.

00:14:26.960 A lot of it is based on racism in the past as opposed to the present.

00:14:30.660 And then there are some things that you might even trace to bias today.

00:14:35.960 You might say that in health care there does seem to be a sense

00:14:39.460 that Black people don't suffer as much pain, and yet that's real. I accept those studies. 1.00

00:14:45.340 All those things fall under the heading of systemic racism. But most of the things that

00:14:49.860 are systemic racism, I don't like the term, but the phenomena definitely exist, racial inequities.

00:14:55.400 A lot of those things can't be solved by doing something called eliminating racism. So it's not

00:15:01.800 that I don't think those things exist. It's interesting. Many people seem to think that

00:15:06.460 I'm saying, there's no problem. That's not it. The issue is what you do about the problem. So for

00:15:12.240 example, I'm guessing, this is just my guess because I don't know Larry Elder that well

00:15:17.420 anymore, but my guess is that Larry Elder would say, let's just stop talking about systemic

00:15:21.520 racism. These things aren't real. Just fuck up and get out there and deal. That's not what I'm

00:15:25.520 saying. That's expecting too much of people, if you ask me. That's not how human beings operate.

00:15:30.840 If you don't know how to deal, if you've never been around anybody who dealt, you've got to be

00:15:35.400 taught how to deal. The occasional person teaches themselves how to deal, and they become Larry

00:15:40.260 Elder. But most people can't do that. But the thing is, going out and undoing the racism

00:15:46.300 is not going to solve, say, for example, the attitude that many Black kids have towards school

00:15:51.620 because of racism 50 and 60 years ago. You can't undo the racism. You have to undo how the Black 1.00

00:15:57.400 kids feel. And it's not about changing white teachers' attitudes. For a lot of people, 0.98

00:16:02.440 If it's not going to be about changing white teachers' attitudes by giving conference papers and doing Twitter posts about white teachers' subtle racism, well, that's no fun because that's not undoing the racism.

00:16:13.780 What that means is that the kids stay exactly where they are.

00:16:16.500 That won't do.

00:16:17.480 That's the point of the book.

00:16:19.520 Well, and in particular on the teaching point, I mean, it strikes me that the last thing you'd want to do if you want to help kids of white teachers is make the white teachers super concerned about the way they use words and all of that, instead of giving them the robust support they need to teach the kids what the kids need to learn, right?

00:16:40.160 Yeah, they should teach the kids what the kids need to learn.

00:16:42.280 and there's this fashionable idea that we're supposed to look away from that and think of

00:16:47.180 new ways that are sensitized to the conditions that the kids come from but isn't it interesting

00:16:52.900 that back in the day no one thought of that and in many circumstances the education of even poor

00:16:58.320 black kids was better it's treated as a settled question that teaching must be infused with a 0.98

00:17:04.360 very subtle and very thorough awareness that a poor black kid isn't the same as a middle-class 0.96

00:17:10.380 white kid and it's always just verging on saying that poor black kids can't learn as well but no

00:17:16.400 that hasn't been proven it's just that it feels good to think that way if your central goal is

00:17:21.540 showing that you know racism exists which is different from actually making life better for

00:17:26.640 somebody who was of a race this to me john and i'm sure you you might agree with this is the

00:17:32.680 bigotry of low expectations when i was a teacher you know consultants would come in and they would

00:17:39.040 say to me, see, the thing is, Mr. Foster, with your boys, you can't expect them to do

00:17:44.400 what girls do when it comes to reading, when it comes to sitting still, when it comes to 1.00

00:17:48.840 concentration. And I just remember thinking to myself, well, once you have that attitude

00:17:53.600 to a certain section of society, they're doomed. They're absolutely doomed because

00:17:58.980 then they will play up to that. And you're offering kids an easy way out because once

00:18:05.000 child has an easy way out, the vast majority of them are going to take it. So to me, they're

00:18:09.860 crippling these children before they have a chance to even walk. And you know, the thing is, 0.99

00:18:15.520 that's absolutely true. And the person who tells you that cannot point to any studies or even any

00:18:22.800 logic that shows that things are better when you don't require people to sit still, when you don't

00:18:29.340 require people to do their best. Where are the studies that show that people learn more and do

00:18:34.400 better when less is expected of them because they come from less than perfect homes nowhere

00:18:38.880 it would never occur to anybody that they would have to prove it it's just a matter of what it

00:18:42.920 feels good to say that won't do and john one of the things that strikes me about this because i'm

00:18:53.060 i was born in the soviet union i'm originally from russia i'm sort of white but i'm also not

00:18:58.740 exactly. I was not born here. My ancestors didn't own slaves. In fact, my ancestors were slaves

00:19:04.860 in the Russian empire and in Nazi Germany, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, I have this visceral

00:19:12.360 instinctive reaction when people start telling me that I'm guilty of stuff or I need to acknowledge

00:19:17.620 stuff or I need to apologize for stuff. It seems counterproductive to me. It doesn't strike me as

00:19:22.400 the way to bring people along. And I worry about it for myself because I don't want that to

00:19:27.940 radicalize me into opposing things that actually need to be done. And I feel like that maybe has

00:19:33.760 happened over the last couple of years, because this way of approaching it does push people into

00:19:38.360 corners. So how do we avoid that while still having the conversation that we need to have?

00:19:44.960 Well, there needs to be, and I haven't thought deeply about this yet. I haven't thought deeply

00:19:49.820 about a lot of things, but there needs to be a reassessment of this notion of complicitness.

00:19:53.840 Because, yeah, the standard issue answer to you is that, yes, you arrived here from somewhere else, but you are now participating in and benefiting from a system, and therefore you are abstractly complicit in the oppression of people by systemic racism, even if you have a history somewhere else.

00:20:12.640 And we all know that that argument is forced. There are people who are going to enjoy and embrace that argument because they have other imperatives, but most people never will. That's never going to work. That is never going to compel a critical mass of society.

00:20:26.920 And we need to just start facing it and realizing that if we're going to move ahead, we need to try something else. That complicitness argument really jumped the rails in the United States starting in the teens. And it's an interesting idea, but to push it too far, especially with as many immigrant people as we have in this country, including children of immigrants, not to mention immigrants themselves, it will never compel a critical mass of people. 0.80

00:20:51.300 And it's not because the people are racist. It's because life is complex and we all have our individual identities and stories.

00:20:58.620 A lot of the race debate that we have now is predicated as if it were 1960, when it was highly oversimplified to say it even then.

00:21:07.640 But there were white people and there were black people. In some places, there were some Latinos.

00:21:12.800 There was a handful of Asians, except in a few places in the country. And God knows what else there was. 0.96

00:21:17.800 There was the idea that immigrants from, say, the Czech Republic, etc., well, Czechoslovakia at the time, they assimilated quickly. So nobody thought of them as a foreign element beyond their first generation. So you had white people and black people. That's not true now. There are Latinos getting to be more of them than black people. Since the Immigration Act of 1965, so very many people in this country come from very different places.

00:21:42.280 Black people are just a sliver at this point. And the conversation that we're having is basically becoming, what do we owe that sliver of the American population who were descendants of African slaves a very long time ago? That's going to have ever less purchase upon, say, the Korean grandmother. It isn't going to work. 0.99

00:22:00.400 and that is so true but the problem is with that conversation the more you talk about it the more

00:22:08.660 you realize there is no solution to it and the more we just go around in circles and the less

00:22:14.840 it is able to be done the less we're able to move forward yeah it worries me because there needs to

00:22:20.820 be a proactive agenda and instead for example you think about the current administration in this

00:22:27.400 country. And I have no damning complaints about the Biden administration so far. I think it's too

00:22:33.620 early to prognosticate, especially given that we're still dealing with the pandemic. But I think that

00:22:39.040 if Biden and Kamala Harris wanted to do something about race, I'm afraid that in terms of what's

00:22:44.480 considered the proper optics, what they would do is invite, you know, Ibram Kendi to the White House

00:22:50.680 to say some things. And whatever he said would make sense to him, but wouldn't have much to do

00:22:55.580 with what would actually change lives on the ground in terms of people who are informed about

00:23:01.280 policy, people who are informed about politics and the like. So there'll be these pictures taken

00:23:06.060 of writers who have a certain clout. Nicole Hannah-Jones will be one of them. And the thing

00:23:11.760 is, nothing would happen is the problem. And I haven't the slightest desire to be asked to the

00:23:17.240 White House. It's not me. It's that it would be people who were more interested in doing real

00:23:22.240 things on the ground, such as elected officials who actually are showing interesting results in

00:23:28.200 their cities. Those are the people who should be asked about what Black America needs. But instead, 0.99

00:23:33.340 it's going to be people who have a message that America must be made aware that it needs to,

00:23:38.520 you know, stand up to its ideals. America needs to understand that all Black problems are due 1.00

00:23:43.640 to racism in some fashion, none of which changes anything. That's, yeah, that does worry me very

00:23:49.020 much. Because that's the problem, isn't it? That we platform people, or I hate that term,

00:23:55.300 but we turn these people into celebrities without actually analyzing the quality of their ideas.

00:24:03.160 Because once you listen to the quality of these ideas, as someone who comes from Venezuela and

00:24:08.040 has seen what's happened when you abolish capitalism, I'm here to tell you they're not 0.96

00:24:11.400 very fucking good, excuse my language. Yeah. And of course, the idea is it wasn't 0.97

00:24:17.400 tried properly. You know, that's, that's always the idea. All of these people are interested in

00:24:22.260 flavors. They're interested in postures. They're interested in a kind of performance because they

00:24:27.540 think it's a necessary prelude to change. That is not a settled question. Change happens without

00:24:33.160 those things. And yeah, we need a whole different set of people who are embraced as celebrities in

00:24:39.200 that way. And I say, again, no one will believe me, but I have to say my truth. My real self

00:24:45.620 is somebody who reads books like this.

00:24:52.180 This is a book about Russian profanity 1.00

00:24:54.380 and I've been thoroughly enjoying it.

00:24:56.780 You don't need a book, John.

00:24:57.820 I can help you out with that, no problem.

00:25:00.960 It's gorgeous how much of it there is.

00:25:03.100 But that's what I want to do.

00:25:04.060 I want to sit at home and do that.

00:25:05.400 I'm not interested in being, quote unquote, a celebrity.

00:25:07.620 But there need to be celebrities in that sense

00:25:10.800 who are about, here's what I did right.

00:25:13.620 And you don't see enough of that

00:25:14.640 because that's not considered sexy enough.

00:25:16.380 That bothers me.

00:25:18.380 And that, you know, the language point

00:25:21.340 I tried to make to you earlier,

00:25:22.640 we didn't quite get to the position,

00:25:24.840 but when Francis said we platformed these people

00:25:27.440 and then corrected himself,

00:25:29.160 that's the sort of thing that I was referring to

00:25:31.640 where language has been used for political purposes.

00:25:36.120 And we saw this in the Soviet Union.

00:25:37.920 It's actually a very powerful thing, I would argue, John,

00:25:40.520 where words no longer have the meaning

00:25:43.200 that they actually have in the dictionary.

00:25:45.900 So for example, when you talk about an inclusive space,

00:25:49.360 which these people often do,

00:25:51.380 what they actually mean is the space

00:25:52.980 where people like the three of us would be excluded from, right?

00:25:55.900 But it's called an inclusive space.

00:25:57.660 When you talk about diversity,

00:25:58.980 it's not about actual diversity.

00:26:01.520 It's about skin color variety or sexuality variety.

00:26:05.600 It's not the same thing as genuine diversity.

00:26:08.620 So my question to you would be,

00:26:11.120 Given how institutionalized all of these ideas have now become, you talk about someone going to the White House. Well, I would put it to you that it wouldn't really make any difference who went to the White House because at the end of the day, the Democratic Party, the institutions of the media and other organizations that deal with all of this, they are so now they all of this stuff is so embedded.

00:26:32.940 I don't even know that anyone speaking sense as you do, for example, if you were in a nightmare of yours to be invited to the White House and have to answer some of these questions, you would make any difference because it's so institutionalized.

00:26:45.180 Is that a concern?

00:26:46.960 Yeah, it is a concern.

00:26:48.580 And I think what we're really talking about is changing the national conversation slowly.

00:26:56.040 And it's easier to believe that change doesn't happen than to acknowledge that it happens slowly.

00:27:00.640 And I think that can happen.

00:27:01.860 And I think that's one of the advantages of social media. And so, for example, I don't feel muzzled. I don't feel like I'm not heard. If I want to say something, I can say it and it's out there. I feel that people are listening. And so there's contention. But I don't feel like the other view of black issues is somehow suppressed.

00:27:23.000 You know, Coleman Hughes made, you know, Forbes magazine's category of, you know, people to watch under 30.

00:27:29.560 That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago.

00:27:31.860 And so things are things are not what they could be, but it's going to be a slow business of changing what people think of as the norm.

00:27:39.640 It's changing the Overton window, so to speak.

00:27:42.080 Well, let me just push back a little bit, because I would say to your argument, at least for devil's advocate purposes, that Coleman Hughes is the Larry Elder example that you gave me before.

00:27:53.400 He's an outstandingly intelligent, charismatic, good looking young man who has a very soft way with these words.

00:28:01.120 But we get the same in comedy, which is our world, right?

00:28:03.860 famous comedians, the Ricky Gervais, the Bill Burrs, others might say, there is no problem

00:28:09.160 with free speech and comedy. I can say what I want to my theater or to my stadium full of people.

00:28:15.120 And that is true. If you're Ricky Gervais and if you're Bill Burr, you can. But if you're a newer

00:28:20.440 comic coming up the ranks, the entire thing looks different because you have a lot less power. And

00:28:25.480 I would argue, yes, a tenured professor or a standout young man like Coleman Hughes, sure,

00:28:32.280 they're not muzzled. There are a lot, awful lot of people, I would put it to you, John, that A,

00:28:36.840 are muzzled and B, are self-muzzling. Well, oh, there's no doubt about that. And so, 0.98

00:28:42.240 for example, in academia, which of course I know best, I know that muzzling is the default. Most 1.00

00:28:48.320 people don't think the way you'd think academics think in terms of the typical op-ed, in terms of

00:28:54.380 what you see on social media, but nobody wants to be called a white supremacist on Twitter. That's

00:28:59.520 the students that's the professors that is many journalists i would say that daily often several

00:29:06.460 times daily but at least once daily i hear from somebody who is within some body of of people

00:29:13.640 who says that they agree with the sorts of things i say and they're usually not conservatives they're

00:29:18.120 not right-wingers say i get it thank you for speaking for me but i could not dare to say

00:29:23.100 these things to the people that i work with that is that is normal without a doubt but

00:29:28.040 on the other hand, I think that people like Coleman, people like me, had less purchase

00:29:34.980 upon the media, say, 10 years ago. I think it's slowly getting better. Now, the question is,

00:29:42.480 what would, you know, the iceberg breaks off, what would be the metric that shows that something had

00:29:48.160 really happened? And it's not going to be somebody writing something in the sky. But I think that

00:29:54.160 the conversation is such let's try this the conversation is such that i sense that the

00:29:59.420 people on the hard hard left sometimes feel like they're on the ropes they feel like the other

00:30:04.120 people are irritants at this point whereas 10 years ago they often pretended that people like

00:30:09.220 me didn't exist i like to see signs of that so you think the direction of travel is positive

00:30:15.860 slowly my worry is john is i don't know how that is is still a good thing if you see what i mean

00:30:27.240 when i look around at everything everything has been politicized everything has been racialized

00:30:33.200 do we not do you not think that it's too little too late at this point well to tell you the truth

00:30:38.980 It depends on what organs we're thinking about.

00:30:43.300 I'm afraid that academia, at least in America, is lost because this kind of person is getting to the point where they're going to be making all of the hiring decisions.

00:30:52.840 I'm watching my own field, for example, where people under 40 are being led by people who think this way.

00:31:00.600 And I'm not sure that anything can be done about it.

00:31:03.180 I have literally realized that I'm going to age out of a field that is nothing like the one that I joined in terms of its political commitments.

00:31:12.040 And I'm sure people are feeling that way in sociology and musicology and history.

00:31:16.780 And from what I hear, although I hope this is alarmist in some STEM subjects, in terms of what you get in journalism, what kind of discussion that you get, it depends on what you call journalism.

00:31:30.000 But, for example, I hate to have it be about me, but notice that the New York Times is letting me publish things twice a week.

00:31:38.660 Nobody would have thought that that would have happened, say, even a year ago.

00:31:42.640 I never thought that I would write for the Times.

00:31:44.860 The Times never ignored me.

00:31:46.520 I wrote for the Times in one way or another probably once or twice a year.

00:31:50.320 But a regular gig I would never have dreamed.

00:31:53.160 And it's because of, I think, a general pushback against the excesses of what you might call wokeness these days.

00:32:00.000 And I don't think that that is an isolated instance in terms of whose voices are out there and whether or not they're listened to. So, for example, another one, because I live in my own head and so I only know me. Masterclass. You can learn how to cook. You can learn Hungarian, etc. There's a masterclass that is about race issues.

00:32:21.380 Now, they've got Nicole Hannah-Jones, they've got Cornel West, they've got, you know, the usual suspects doing their thing very well.

00:32:28.460 Then they also invited me.

00:32:30.100 Now, I'm kind of the odd one out, but they invited me.

00:32:33.200 That master class two years ago would have been only Cornel West and Nicole Hannah-Jones and the usual.

00:32:38.060 There's a message getting out there that to not think like Nicole Hannah-Jones, I hate bringing her up too much, does not make you a moral pervert.

00:32:46.380 That's something.

00:32:47.380 I feel that coming.

00:32:48.420 and so I'm seeing a pushback against what happened in June 2020 and I hope that it can push things

00:32:54.440 back at least to the way they were in 2019 but maybe it shows you what a desperate situation

00:32:58.900 we're in that I'm now nostalgic for 2019. I think we're all nostalgic for 2019 John.

00:33:05.620 I think that's the real problem. Barely, barely the world has changed a lot since. It's been like 10 years.

00:33:12.780 John it's a refreshing conversation can I can ask you something that is curious to me because

00:33:17.280 neither francis or i are on the right uh or frankly on the left at this point where somewhere

00:33:22.900 sort of ambiguously in the middle trying to work what we think out issue by issue

00:33:27.000 why is this race conversation such a right versus left thing

00:33:33.940 it isn't if you ask me the day of the black conservative for real

00:33:44.740 passed about 15 years ago. The list of people that you used to see then, most of those people

00:33:53.320 we don't hear from that much anymore. And this is not a diss, but Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams,

00:34:00.600 until recently, frankly, Larry Elder. I mean, now he's acquiring a new prominence and all power to

00:34:05.780 him. But for a while, he was somebody you thought more about in 04 than now. And I only mentioned

00:34:11.580 that to say that the people who are actual card-carrying Black conservatives, the media

00:34:16.180 definitely stop paying attention to them in the mid-aughts. It's not that they're not there, but

00:34:22.180 Jason Riley, these are great people, but they end up talking mostly to themselves often. Glenn

00:34:28.720 Lowry is a very good friend of mine and one of the smartest people I know, but also kind of

00:34:34.340 an eccentric as a Black conservative. Really, he's just Glenn, essentially. I think really what we're 0.81

00:34:40.180 talking about is the center, such as me, and the hard left. And the fight is over whether the hard

00:34:47.180 left is somehow the heart of Black issues because of slavery and Jim Crow and redlining. I think 0.96

00:34:53.860 the real question is, why can't there be a centrist way of looking at Black issues that

00:34:58.580 isn't seen as some sort of right-wing adjacent fantasy? And I'm seeing that conversation

00:35:05.100 as one that is progressing more constructively than I would have expected.

00:35:10.680 But yeah, right-left doesn't quite make sense.

00:35:13.020 We're not talking about Cornel West versus Shelby Steele.

00:35:16.680 Frankly, Shelby Steele, who was my hero, but Shelby Steele lost that battle.

00:35:21.680 The media just stopped paying attention.

00:35:24.180 But now it's about center and left, I think.

00:35:26.360 Well, let me follow up on that because there's something you keep talking about,

00:35:29.960 which I find very interesting, which is black America.

00:35:32.380 And that used to be a phrase you used to hear a lot.

00:35:35.100 then you heard a bit less. And I think maybe now you're starting to hear it more. And I am someone

00:35:40.220 who always thought from as an outsider perspective, and this is probably extremely idealistic and

00:35:46.320 naive, which I am prone to sometimes, but the American dream, the American idea was that in

00:35:52.540 the words of Barack Obama, there is no black America. There is no white America. You are an 0.99

00:35:57.440 American. And that is the thing that defines you. And as long as you subscribe to the American 0.67

00:36:01.680 values, you are that. But you are quite, I think, insistent on using that term and addressing that

00:36:08.980 audience. So are you someone who thinks that a little bit of identity politics in that way

00:36:14.480 is necessary, is a good thing, is a way to reach people, just matches your belief? What is your

00:36:20.140 take on all of that, John? Constantine, you're catching me in something that is a bit of a pose.

00:36:28.540 you're right what you what you suspect is correct i'm saying black america and i'm saying it because

00:36:37.560 to reach most black people who are interested in this sort of thing one should say that um especially 1.00

00:36:45.240 because there is a sense which i do not agree with but that i figure you can't cut through

00:36:52.560 immediately and you have to choose your battles all of black america is united in having an

00:36:57.440 antagonistic relationship to the cops. The idea is that the cops kill black men. And so whatever 1.00

00:37:03.720 conditions you're in, that is supposed to be something that you deal with whenever you leave

00:37:08.440 your house. I honestly think that is vastly exaggerated. I think the statistics do not

00:37:14.420 support the idea that the cops disproportionately murder black men for reasons I've written about

00:37:19.400 often. The cops murder too many men in general. It's not just a black thing. Nevertheless, 0.97

00:37:25.780 Nevertheless, that position is so fiercely held. What I found in the 90s when I thought, why are so many people exaggerating? The main reason was the cops. I found, oh, this is what's on people's minds. You have to pick your battles carefully. You have to do things in sequence.

00:37:41.260 So, yes, I say Black America.

00:37:43.240 The truth, am I being a bit of a phony in that?

00:37:46.360 Yes, I'm thinking about crafting a message.

00:37:49.440 The truth is, and I learned this from Glenn Lowry back in the 90s, and it's still true,

00:37:54.120 about a third of the Black community needs serious help.

00:37:57.300 The other two-thirds, life isn't perfect, but the battle is won.

00:38:02.280 And I find myself thinking, you know, there's a seafood restaurant.

00:38:08.120 Everybody's going to say, oh, this is anecdotal.

00:38:09.760 But then again, if somebody on the hard left tells one story, that's considered testimony to the history of the world.

00:38:14.980 There's a seafood restaurant that I go to occasionally.

00:38:18.860 And like many restaurants like that, the food is overpriced. 0.99

00:38:22.040 You know, you get this fried shit and you spend like $100. 0.99

00:38:25.980 Yeah, it sounds great. 0.99

00:38:28.480 It's wonderful.

00:38:32.400 It's that kind.

00:38:34.100 It is too expensive.

00:38:34.860 and i always notice when i'm there because it's in the bronx on the beach there are a lot of black 0.92

00:38:40.980 people at it and it's expensive you're drinking your your bad wine you can't get out of there 0.84

00:38:46.940 without spending 120 and yet it is very popular with black people and it's not only black people 0.86

00:38:52.580 who are there because somebody graduated and they're only going to do it once you can tell

00:38:55.580 they hang out there these are ordinary bronx black people wearing velour track suits etc 1.00

00:39:01.720 They can afford to eat at this place

00:39:03.960 And they're not unique

00:39:06.040 It's a core black community

00:39:08.480 Who are doing just fine

00:39:09.720 Now, the reason I'm a phony is because

00:39:11.780 If you talk to two out of three of those people

00:39:13.560 They would still say, the police

00:39:15.560 Are against us

00:39:17.160 And so, okay, we can eat this shrimp

00:39:19.640 And spend $120 living middle class lives

00:39:22.340 But still, we could get knocked over the head

00:39:24.380 By the police just like the poor person

00:39:26.060 I think that that's exaggerated

00:39:28.080 But I can't convince them of that

00:39:30.240 It runs too deep

00:39:31.720 So, yeah, you've caught me out there. What I'm really thinking about is what used to be called the ghetto. But I call this black America as a rhetorical convenience. I feel like I have to. But you're right. 0.99

00:39:43.680 That makes sense.

00:39:44.760 The reason I bring it up, sorry, Francis, I just want to finish this.

00:39:47.180 The reason I bring it up is I am skeptical that we can ever come together as people of different ethnicities if we don't buy into the ideal that I naively perhaps believe in.

00:40:02.600 um and i wonder whether in the process of attempting to reach people and playing to those

00:40:11.940 concerns we maybe sometimes forget that we can't live together as one people if we're so focused

00:40:19.680 on our ethnic identities that's a concern for me what do you think about that you are correct 1.00

00:40:26.620 but you have to slow walk that because there are people who simply can't hear it yes and notice

00:40:35.400 what happens to thomas chatterton williams who we haven't talked about yet but thomas understands

00:40:40.440 that we've got to get past this race idea because you know the way we think about race is as if we

00:40:44.820 were strom thurman it really is absolutely ridiculous a smart child can figure out how 0.50

00:40:50.140 silly this is we've got to get beyond this idea of race balkanizing in that way race as an identity 0.99

00:40:56.120 but wow and yeah i don't now i'm gonna sound like i'm essentializing if you grow up black 0.97

00:41:02.980 you realize that for an awful lot of black people to question that issue of whether you're black or

00:41:10.040 not especially if you've grown up fortunate as it used to be called and you talk like this it is

00:41:16.120 very hard for people like that not to hear you as saying that you think you're better than them

00:41:21.020 and once again you have to pick your battles and so i want to talk first about what will help

00:41:26.120 real people, and maybe say, please stop exaggerating, stop disrespecting our ancestors,

00:41:32.600 then we can get into, must you think of your color as defining you, when really most of us

00:41:38.360 can afford to think we're just Americans eating our fried shrimp and spending too much money.

00:41:44.140 We're all doing the same thing. That's going to have to happen slowly. And you know what I mean

00:41:49.160 by slowly another generation 30 years it's not going to work now it just makes people too upset

00:41:56.560 is my thought you know something john when in 2019 i wouldn't really describe myself as a

00:42:03.120 conspiracy theorist the more i've gone through this pandemic the more i've seen things that

00:42:07.800 haven't really made sense and dictates that my government have given which are completely

00:42:14.220 nonsensical is there a part of you that looks at all this stuff and go this is just glorified

00:42:19.760 divide and conquer no we're bees everybody is a bee we're doing what we need to do they're doing

00:42:30.460 what they need to do there are aggregate effects that nobody intended i don't know how you would

00:42:37.160 identify a divide and conquer mentality as anything deliberate nobody says it or at least

00:42:43.960 They don't write it down. I'm not inclined to think that they're discussing it in private spaces.

00:42:48.900 It's the way it ends up looking because there are such shallow but powerful emotional benefits to tribalism and shallow emotional benefits to being white and encouraging that tribalism out of a sense not of divide and conquer, but of showing that you're not a bad person.

00:43:06.100 It's a religion. So, yeah, that's I'm not inclined to think of conspiracy theories.

00:43:10.200 and we always say it's it's a religion what why do you think that particularly

00:43:16.220 oh because a religious framework is the only way that a lot of this stuff makes sense you 0.80

00:43:23.120 have a stray white cop who kills the occasional person almost always in indefensible ways

00:43:30.580 the same person who got killed that way was often in much more danger of being killed 0.89

00:43:36.400 by a black man in his own community in much much much more danger and yet the national discourse

00:43:44.000 is much more upset about the white cop than about what that black guy is in more danger of dying of

00:43:52.280 that makes no sense whatsoever unless you see a commitment to showing that you know racism exists

00:43:59.840 that is so furious, so much a part of identity, that it resists facts and logic. That, to me,

00:44:09.020 is religious thought. It's part of many religions to let logic go. And then the chasing heretics, 1.00

00:44:17.440 the white privilege as original sin, the fact that you're not supposed to ask too many questions,

00:44:22.360 all of that falls out naturally from it. But I honestly believe, and I'm taking a certain amount

00:44:27.940 of heat, the idea being that my religious analogy is simplistic or that I should just call it an

00:44:33.120 ideology. But no, the religious analysis works. I fully think that a naive anthropologist who

00:44:40.760 didn't know of language and the labels that we use would see the way the wokesters have been 1.00

00:44:46.320 behaving since two years ago as indistinguishable from Pentecostalism. I don't think they'd see any

00:44:51.720 difference. They would apply the same words. And it also helps understand why a person can be so

00:44:57.240 confoundingly mean when you question their beliefs about these things you're questioning

00:45:01.900 them you're questioning their basic ethical commitment you're questioning their religion

00:45:06.780 that's when somebody gets that upset it's like saying jesus doesn't love you that's going to

00:45:11.340 make somebody angry same thing here so yeah it really does it helps me make sense of what

00:45:17.420 otherwise can make you mad and i don't want to be mad and are there positives to this religion john 0.78

00:45:23.360 no not the religious degree of it no i mean when it gets to be a religion it ends up hurting black 0.50

00:45:33.140 people because you're more concerned with showing things than actually helping someone it'd be nice

00:45:40.040 if people were deeply committed to helping black people in a religious sort of way that would be a

00:45:47.000 that would be an offshoot religion to this one. So yeah, the one that we have, no, I would like 1.00

00:45:54.100 to see it gone, but it won't go away. So we just have to work around the people who think that way.

00:45:59.160 John, that makes perfect sense. Listen, I know you've got to go in about five minutes. So we

00:46:03.260 will ask you the last question of the main interview and then do a couple of questions

00:46:06.760 for our supporters only. So the last question we always ask on the show, and you actually haven't

00:46:11.260 been warned of this. So I'm curious to see what he says. And this doesn't have to be related to

00:46:16.280 anything we've been talking about is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society

00:46:21.840 that we really should be my answer to that is really mundane well it's not that we're not

00:46:35.940 talking about it i don't think we talk about climate change enough i feel like in 10 years

00:46:42.700 it's going to be at the point where we're wondering why we were talking about woke racism

00:46:47.360 etc when the planet was about to burn up I really worry about that but you want something more

00:46:53.060 underground than that um I mean to be fair with you John in this country we talk about climate

00:46:59.200 change an awful lot I promise you that yeah I mean it's not that it's not talked about I

00:47:05.460 sometimes worry that we're all going to think we should have talked about it even more

00:47:09.640 But what do we not talk about? I wish that science were more interested in finding a cure for clinical obesity, because I feel like it wouldn't be that hard, given what can now happen.

00:47:28.600 It's not considered as important as some other things, and I guess I understand why, but I watch people who have that condition, and often it's not because they eat too much, or sometimes it is, but you can't stop eating too much.

00:47:42.760 And I think to myself, wow, I would hate to be that person.

00:47:47.120 I don't think that it's their fault.

00:47:49.120 And I wish that there were a more concerted solution to that.

00:47:54.000 I think about it all the time.

00:47:55.200 I'm not sure why.

00:47:56.160 obesity has never been a personal problem of mine but watching the way people eat and the way people

00:48:03.440 in non-western countries are beginning to eat the same way that that seems to be a way people start

00:48:09.040 eating when prosperity comes in watching what's happening in some parts of china or on some

00:48:13.300 polynesian islands i know that seems like an eccentric thing that i'm just kind of bringing

00:48:18.600 up to sound fresh, but it has always touched me deeply that people end up ruining their bodies

00:48:28.060 through no fault of their own because of the way food is in modern societies. I wish that could be

00:48:33.660 solved. That is my honest answer to that. And a very good one at that. John, we're going to do a

00:48:39.680 couple of questions for locals after we wrap up here, but I thoroughly recommend everybody get

00:48:44.060 the book, Woke Racism. And if there's any way people can follow you online, John, and keep up

00:48:49.400 with your work, where's the best place to do that? I'm kind of low tech on that. I'm on Twitter,

00:48:55.500 but I don't spend my life on it the way many people do. I write a piece for the Times twice

00:49:01.820 a week, which often reflects whatever's on my mind. And it's not always race. I don't have a

00:49:09.060 website i'm not i'm not that type read my books well we do recommend that you do thank you so much

00:49:16.860 for your time john we'll do a couple of locals questions in a second thank all of you uh for

00:49:21.160 watching and listening we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one

00:49:24.960 or or show all of them go at 7 p.m uk time and for those of you who like your trigonometry on

00:49:30.140 the go it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon we hope you've enjoyed this

00:49:36.600 incredible interview. Remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss

00:49:42.240 another fantastic episode. And if you believe that the work we do here at Trigonometry is

00:49:47.760 important, support us by joining our Locals community using the link below.

TRIGGERnometry - December 16, 2021

Is ＂Anti-Racism＂ Helping Black People？ - John McWhorter

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