Spelling Out the Problem with W-o-k-e-n-e-s-s
Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter Portfolio/Penguin, 2021, xv 201 pp.
John McWhorter is an eminent linguistics professor who teaches at Columbia. He is himself black, and he argues that “woke” racism does not help blacks and other minorities. It has, he says, become a religion, and those who question it are dealt with severely by its acolytes, to the detriment of a free society. He does not confine the book to criticism but also proposes a three-step program aimed to help blacks succeed.
What is “woke” racism? According to McWhorter, it holds that all aspects of American society are racist, having as their function the suppression of nonwhites to the advantage of the dominant white elite. Society consists entirely of a struggle for power.
It is rarely stated explicitly, but decisively steers its adherents’ perspective on existence and morality. Third Wave Antiracism’s homily par excellence would be the following: Battling power relations and their discriminatory effects must be the central focus of all human endeavor, be it intellectual, moral, civic, or artistic. Those who resist this focus, or even evidence insufficient adherence to it, must be deeply condemned, deprived of influence, and ostracized. (pp. 10–11)
A particularly insidious part of the “woke” ideology is an extension of the notion of “white privilege,” under which whites are condemned for virtually anything they do or say, and which often rejects their anxious efforts to show their antiracism as inept or “actually” racist.
To anticipate a question, yes, I do believe that to be white in America is to automatically harbor certain unstated privileges in terms of one’s sense of belonging. Figure
Article from Mises Wire
