Looking for challengers to the 'Racial (in)Justice' narrative I came across a book 'Woke Racism' by John McWhorter.
This book is a rare thing - it shouldn't be as it talks mostly sense, but it's rare because it challenges the 'woke' non-sense and is ready to pay the price for doing so. The author's idea of woke is tied up with the DEI policies that he sees "actually infantilize Black Americans, set Black students up for failure, and pass policies that disproportionately damage Black communities.". We've seen tragic evidence of this with Jason Arday.
John McWhorter is an Afro-American lecturer in linguistics, philosophy and music history at Columba University who had a good upbringing and, I would guess, a happy family life.
Moral damage
He is frustrated with the 'woke' not just because they are factually wrong but because they are morally deficient, they do damage to the people they claim to be championing. He deduces that the only people they intend to serve are themselves! His name for them is 'The Elect' and he sees their psychology (and pathology) bearing all the marks of a religious sect. In this he draws on his partial understanding of the religion he is most familiar with, Christianity, and we can see what he's saying without agreeing with the casting of true Christianity as cultist: superstitions, unthinking dogma, blind belief.
His belief-system is firmly embedded in Enlightenment rationalism, salted with human compassion. He is no fan of President Trump, no doubt votes Democrat, is sensitive to racism and supportive of George Floyd. So in this sense we're seeing an insider struggling to understand the madness that has taken over his natural allies, Black and White. It's a bit like reading reports of a patriotic Solzhenitsyn speaking of the Communist rot within his beloved Russia. As with Solzhenitsyn you wonder quite how the censors let this out. Another notable refusenik is Thomas Sowell - whose economic texts are standards and who has also written on Social Justice Fallacies.
Crazy people?
"From a certain distance it looks like we're dealing with people who "went crazy." But that won't do. How many people can we realistically tar as insane? In what human society has a critical mass of people ever became mentally deranged? Yet we want to know why this new religion arose."
He dismisses Critical Race Theory: "We must not be taken in by the fact that this is called "critical" that it's about race, and that its titled a "theory". It is a fragmentary, performative ideology... to explicitly reject linear reasoning, traditional legal theorizing, and even Enlightenment rationalism. We are to favor an idea that an oppressed race's "story" constitutes truth, in an overarching sense, apart from mere matters of empirical or individual detail." p63
So in the book he has chapters on defining the 'new religion' working out what attracts people to it, that it hurts Black people, how to dismantle it and how to really help. His writing style is engaging with a quirky use of grammar and words in a few places - maybe as a result of being a creative linguist!
Mostly sensible
So what he says is mostly sensible. We know that whole peoples do have moral blindness, they are crazy, we are all fallen and any 'enlightenment' we have is from Him. Every people-group has it's religious and civic leaders, just visit any desert island and mostly they are self-serving and tolerated by the population for survival and for fear of anything worse. Sound familiar? So while the Enlightenment piggy-backed off the Reformation, so the rejection of God leads to the moral and intellectual darkness McWhorter sees but cannot understand.
Prescriptions
Spoiler alert! His prescription is just three things: to a) 'Teach reading properly', b) 'Get past the idea everyone must go to college' (university), c) 'End the war on drugs'. This last is strange to us, but maybe not so much in the NYC where he lives and where Black men seem to be particularly incarcerated for neighbourhood dealing in lieu of a proper job - ie a failure of the first two points and a further bar to flourishing. He is unapologetic about the simplicity of this and the fact that the answer is not just to 'get rid of racism' as pursued by 'The Elect' with their "charismatic but self-directed, sociopolitically futile and quietly racist alternative" p139
If only a politician or church leader would speak up with such simple clarity as relates to Britain! Instead we have the lazy 'allyship' which I cannot but think is is highly Grievous. In the Church of England there are 'Racial Justice Coordinators' with toolkits who quote the very people John McWhorter mocks: 'White Fragility' by DiAngelo, 'How to Be an Antiracist' by Kendi.
Although written in 2021 the book is highly relevant - see his recent scathing response on X to Ibram Kendi about Jason Arday, which is typical of the deep division and also the tragic rot in much of British, US and Canadian education. The Canadian government’s research grant DEI policy where 'able-bodied-white-men-need-not-apply' is costing them $18M annually, which is not just taxation-theft but a moral wrong - as that research is supposed to improve human life. Tim Dieppe writes well of the poor state that is Cambridge’s liberal arts - a New Dark Age.
So if nothing else this book gives you confidence to shrug off the stifling weight of needing to be nice to a truly deceitful and destructive narrative. Indeed we must be on the offensive because many need to rescued from these: ...hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. (Mt 23:27b)
