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?
Fixed.
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
My argument in the piece was that McWhorter is mimicking the very faults of the people he criticizes, so I'm not sure where the disagreement is here.