One note: “In fact, the first Klan was an underground terrorist organization that tried to sabotage the push for Black political violence after the Civil War.”
This should read “Black political power”, correct?
I am not going to defend Whorter's column - the first half was good, and the second half seemed tacked on as an extended argument with the people who took March's name off the theatre. That said:
"The strange thing about McWhorter’s argument is that it seems premised on a binary understanding of racism: either March was racist or he was not."
A lot of the actually existing anti-racist argumentation seems premised on just that binary understanding of racism - any old or historical person contaminated by one drop of the dreaded minor racism has to be driven from society. McWhorter *accepts* that proposition and then tries to scrub any of March's racism off, which mandates the tendentious second half of the column. Which doesn't succeed: once you accept the one drop proposition, you kind of have to purify society of the unredeemable.
I think that's all stupid and unworkable. Whereas:
"(Also of note in this passage is McWhorter’s display of a double standard when it comes to judging college kids. When he's talking about the white college kids of 1919-1920, he bends over backwards to try to give them every benefit of the doubt and plead for a benign judgement of their actions. When he talks about contemporary college kids, he's snidely dismissive of them as ignorant.) "
I'd take the stance that the white college kids of 1921 were probably stupid and impulsive and fad-prone, as are the college kids of 2021, and everybody should just get the fuck over themselves.
We have a big old racism problem and what matters is what are we doing about it now?
Jerry Coyne has a write-up about this topic. Apparently, the NAACP has called for the return of March's name to the campus.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/09/25/more-mishigass-in-michigan/
Great piece.
One note: “In fact, the first Klan was an underground terrorist organization that tried to sabotage the push for Black political violence after the Civil War.”
This should read “Black political power”, correct?
I am not going to defend Whorter's column - the first half was good, and the second half seemed tacked on as an extended argument with the people who took March's name off the theatre. That said:
"The strange thing about McWhorter’s argument is that it seems premised on a binary understanding of racism: either March was racist or he was not."
A lot of the actually existing anti-racist argumentation seems premised on just that binary understanding of racism - any old or historical person contaminated by one drop of the dreaded minor racism has to be driven from society. McWhorter *accepts* that proposition and then tries to scrub any of March's racism off, which mandates the tendentious second half of the column. Which doesn't succeed: once you accept the one drop proposition, you kind of have to purify society of the unredeemable.
I think that's all stupid and unworkable. Whereas:
"(Also of note in this passage is McWhorter’s display of a double standard when it comes to judging college kids. When he's talking about the white college kids of 1919-1920, he bends over backwards to try to give them every benefit of the doubt and plead for a benign judgement of their actions. When he talks about contemporary college kids, he's snidely dismissive of them as ignorant.) "
I'd take the stance that the white college kids of 1921 were probably stupid and impulsive and fad-prone, as are the college kids of 2021, and everybody should just get the fuck over themselves.
We have a big old racism problem and what matters is what are we doing about it now?
elm
why are elite arguments so dumb?
cf. the war on terror