“Woke Racism” (2021) is a book by John McWhorter subtitled, “How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America”. Since 2020, wokery has become a “scourge” in the US, “an ideological reign of terror”. It is performative virtue-signalling that styles itself as anti-racist, but is itself racist in how it babies Black people to not pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Amy “Tiger Mom” Chua is a fan of the book.
Electism: What others call “the woke mob” or “social justice warriors”, McWhorter calls the Elect, their religion Electism. It is an anti-racism that comes out of critical race theory.
Its three testaments are:
- “Between the World and Me” (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “White Fragility” (2018) by Robin DiAngelo
- “How to Be an Antiracist” (2019) by Ibram X. Kendi
Kendi, Coates and DiAngelo are its high priests. Its aim is to accuse White people of racism and get them to admit their White privilege.
Huh? The Kendi and Coates that I know have, like me, given up on most White people.
McWhorter:
“You are in Russia under Stalin. You no more question KenDiAngelonian gospel than you question Romans or Corinthians [in the Bible]. The Elect are not about diverseness of thought. Eliminating it, on race issues, is their reason for being.”
As an anti-racist blogger, and even as a Christian, this bears no resemblance to anything in my experience.
A religion: He calls Electism a religion because of “contradictions” like this one:
- On the one hand: “When whites move away from black neighborhoods, it’s white flight.”
- Yet on the other hand: “When whites move into black neighborhoods, it’s gentrification, even when they pay black residents generously for their houses.”
Electism is therefore irrational, therefore a religion. That allows him to take nothing it says seriously. And to argue that, as religion, it has no place in schools or universities.
A threat: He smears the Elect as a threat in just the same way Islamophobes smear Muslims and White racists smear Black men: by holding up the worst among them as representative. In this case it is the cancel-culture Twitter mob.
All the hits: The book abounds in racist tropes: Black-on-Black crime, bootstraps, welfare queens, ethnographic studies, Black pathology, acting White, anti-racists are the real racists, and even an update to the race industry argument. He says the War on Drugs was not racist and that White teachers are no longer racist. Black people are held back more by their culture than by racism or police brutality.
Racism does still exist, but:
“A lot today’s victimhood claims on race are fake.”
After all, Black students are more likely to report experiencing racism at university than at high school. Proof that they are being coached (presumably by left-wing professors).
Three Planks: The one ray of sunshine in this “screed” (his word) are policies to help Black people:
- End the War on Drugs.
- Teach phonics.
- Push trade schools as an alternative to university.
Racism and police brutality, which the Elect like to bemoan, are too much a part of the social fabric to uproot any time soon.
Just say no: As to the Elect, McWhorter says stand up to them and get used to being called racist.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- books – books I read in 2021
- compare and contrast:
- McWhorter: Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion – the 2015 opinion piece that apparently became this book
- Amy Chua
- Black people according to The Economist in 2021
- high priests:
- Ta-Nehisi Coates – Between the World and Me
- Ibram X. Kendi – Stamped from the Beginning (the book of his that I read)
- Robin diAngelo – White fragility
- tropes
- Black-on-Black crime
- bootstraps
- welfare queens
- ethnographic studies
- Black pathology
- anti-racists are the real racists
- acting White
- race industry argument
- critical race theory
- White privilege
- White flight
- gentrification
- Islamophobia
- War on Drugs
- The R-word
- This blog is not a revival meeting to save White souls
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John McWhorter has always been controversial as a black republican. I simply do not agree with most of his proclamations as a black educated woman. He does not speak to my generation aged 70 and over.
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Thank you for this review. I’ve been intrigued by his conversations on linguistics, but I’ve always found myself at odds with McWhorter’s social commentaries. That said, I thought it odd that I agreed with some things he said on a couple of interviews I’ve watched since the book came out. I was beginning to reassess my impression of him, but after reading your review I see he’s up to his old tricks and just keeping some of those things under wrap in nationally televised videos. Gotta sell those books I guess, lol. For the record @Jennifer A Thompson, he swears he’s not a Republican (which was one of the things that surprised me in one of the interviews I mentioned). He says he’s never even voted for a Republican.
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It’s difficult to rely on anything he says, but McWhorter as a black Republican is the truth. Thanks.
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He says he’s NOT a Republican, I believe him.
However, this is a classic non-sequitur since no interviewer ever asks him what his political affiliations are (atleast in the discussions I’ve seen him in).
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Anyone else get Booker T Washington vibes from him sometimes?
People are messy and nuanced and despite the dichotomous tendencies of our current social media culture, people like McWhorter (who I disagree with more often than not) do cause me to pause and challenge my own thinking. I mean, his example about white flight vs gentrification does illustrate the importance of understanding nuance even though it’s a blatant and hyperbolic appeal to the right. Boil that issue down to a talking point and it becomes a conundrum.
I wonder about the audience for the book. Is the target audience actually the performative woke that he talks about? Hoping to sell books to people who are “on the fence” or seeing the problem and wondering what they can do to help but who will actually be happier to be absolved and allowed to move on because a Black man told them it’s not really their fault and crazy lefties just tricked them? I’m reminded of D’Souza’s “The End of Racism”.
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Open Minded Observer, Mr McWorther does exactly what he often criticizes the “woke” left for doing: simplifies nuanced issues into nicely sized dicotomic blocks.
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“Is the target audience actually the performative woke that he talks about?”
Of course not. The target is “all lives matter” white racists who deny racism and will eat this up. They especially love it when they can find a black person that spews this shit, it gives them a chance to post about a black person who supports their position and they think that makes them “not racist”. That’s why every white racist loves Candace Owens.
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So his book isn’t aimed at Black people and is basically a compendium of the updated versions of white supremacy’s greatest hits, with a soupçon of st he simply pulled out of his a!
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@David
“The target is “all lives matter” white racists who deny racism and will eat this up.”
See, that’s what my gut instinctively thought too but, I have yet to meet an “all lives matter” type who would spend a dime on a book about race. That’s why I wondered if the objective was to profit from so-called allies while simultaneously undermining their convictions and giving them permission to go back to their comfortable lives of ignorance.
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This is useful…
(https://youtu.be/-i7Fu-wnvvs)
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