. . . Columbia University, "white supremacy," the 2016 elections, Ta-Nehisi Coates, black professors, and religion and heresy.
ONE RARELY spends time more profitably than in reading anything by John McWhorter. If you do not know him, read this almost three-year-old interview. I'll offer snips below, but you'd do better to go to the source.
He is — or was in December 2017 — an outspoken anti-Trumper. That's fine. He's wrong about how to vote, I believe, but his negative view of Trump adds weight to his positive views on how students, professors, and others should behave. I look forward to reading more from him, now that the left has more clearly embraced the words — white supremacy —he criticized in 2017 and, more troubling, has embraced . . .
. . . violence.
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[Many] people’s analysis of this is that we who have a problem with all of these speakers being shouted down—we are modern-day equivalents of the people who saw student protests in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and felt that all those students needed to just cut their hair and go back to the classroom.
That’s a really off analysis because the crucial difference . . . is the new idea that certain people aren’t to be just protested, but they absolutely aren’t to be heard; that their speech is to be shut down.
And it’s not only directed against people who are openly arguing for concepts that most of us consider nauseous: outright white supremacy, and branding other races as troglodyte groups who are set to be exterminated or to fall behind. That’s one thing. But also just buttoned-up sorts of people saying things that could be taken as supporting X, Y and Z. Even people like this should not even be allowed to open their mouths.
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[There's] a particular theatrical aspect to all of this in that I find it simply incoherent—it’s not believable—that a psychologically healthy person and one intelligent and ambitious enough to have gotten into a selective school, in particular, is somebody who is constitutionally unable to bear hearing somebody express views that they don’t agree with, or that they even find nauseous.
It’s one thing to find views repugnant. It’s another thing to claim that—to hear them constitute a kind of injury that no reasonable person should be expected to stand up to. That’s theatrical because it’s not true. Nobody is hurt in that immediate, lasting and intolerable way by some words that a person stands up and addresses, in the abstract, to an audience at a microphone.
There’s an argument as to whether somebody can be harmed by being called names directly over a longer period of time. But the idea that hearing ideas that can be construed as being complicit in something as abstract as societal racism—hearing these ideas constitutes injury along the lines of, for example, somebody calling you a nigger to your face once a day—it’s not that I don’t agree with this idea; it’s that it doesn’t make any sense. It isn’t true.
To claim that is a kind of theater in itself. You are pretending—and that really is the only appropriate word—you’re pretending that something that you find unpleasant to behold is injurious. And I think that the theatricality of that kind in the argument is a response in part to the fact that to make your case otherwise—that somebody just shouldn’t be heard—is difficult. You have to pretend that it’s hurting you like a punch in the stomach, because otherwise it becomes a little inconveniently transparent that, really, you’re just insisting that you have your own way because you’ve decided that a certain way of thinking is what’s on the side of the angels.
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[I] can certainly see [the words white supremacy] on flyers. It’s definitely there in terms of how various events are advertised. . . . [There] are protests, which are healthy in themselves, where that term . . . is certainly used in a way that wasn’t before and I can only think of Katherine Franke, the law professor at Columbia using the words “white supremacist” against Mark Lilla for his book counseling liberals to focus less on identity politics and [more] on economics in order to have a Democratic president and not the current idiot in the White House.
The fact that Katherine Franke felt so comfortable using that word, saying that he was supporting white supremacy, is indicative. I don’t think ten years ago she would have used that term. It’s fashionable. . . .
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I think that if somebody really does have white supremacist views, if somebody actually thinks that white people are better, or the corollary, that white immigrants who came here did it the right way, and the ones who have come since aren’t doing it the right way—sure, white supremacy is a great term. White supremacy should not refer solely to the Ku Klux Klan. It should not refer solely to the views of people who are most prominent 100 years ago. Terms evolve.
However, I think that the way it’s being used today extends far beyond people like that to what just about ten minutes ago was being called racist or institutional racism. White supremacy has come into use not because it referred to something new but as a punchier way of referring to racism in a climate where, perhaps, it has gotten to the point that just to say “racism” no longer makes as many people jump in their seat as it used to.
Nowadays, if you say something is racist, there are people who for better or for worse roll their eyes and say, “Why do you have to keep pulling up the race card?” And I think that it’s healthy that a certain number of people, left of the right, although it’s not enough, are beginning to understand that there’s a contingent who call too much racism.
[There's] a point at which what’s being called racism is really either accidental or an issue of individual difference or an issue—this gets really complex—that racism can create cultural traits that outlast the racism itself, which is something that people have a really hard time with, and especially when it refers to blacks rather than white people. It’s interesting.
Everybody finds the point readily comprehensible when it’s written about in Hillbilly Elegy which is about whites. But extending that same argument to black people is being somehow unjust.
But white supremacy is a way of calling somebody a racist or calling something racist in a way that at least, in 2017 and 2018, shut a lot of people up because the image is so graphic and it makes you think about lynching.
I think–and this is something that a linguist rarely says because generally we have spectators and we like to watch language evolve and we know that we can’t stop it from evolving—but I think calling people white supremacists for saying things about race that you don’t agree with is an abuse of language. I think the cleanest way of putting it is that, I think, it’s often mean. There are people who think of it as constructive and articulate. I think it’s just mean, and I really think that people should be more judicious about when they use that term.
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The interviewer says Professor McWhorter opened his first class after Donald Trump was elected president with these words: “I said what we’re going to use this session for is talking about why these people voted this way. And we’re not going to call them racist, we’re going to figure out what led to them to voting for someone like this, and how we can keep it from happening again."
My sense was that most students were open to looking at it that way. It’s very easy to think that college campuses are full of these people we’re calling “snowflakes” who are ready to jump out into the streets and make sure that Charles Murray and Heather MacDonald don’t get to speak.
That’s not true. It’s a minority and I think most of the students found it a relief, in my sense, from things that were half-said and things that were said to me both before and after was that most of the students didn’t want the professor to do that sermon about how the country is full of racists. The students are aware that’s unnuanced, especially since a lot of them have relatives who were among the people who voted for Trump, and they know that their uncles and grandparents and maybe even parents are not terrible people.
And so I think that it was the right way to go. And, of course, some students were inclined to push the racist point although not to any uncivil degree. But I think, with all humility, I think that a lot of students then learned something and, of course, my point was that Trump is repulsive. I think that he is repulsive and inept and in the wrong place to a truly alarming degree.
That, of course, helps that discussion. Moreover, I was not saying I’m a Trump voter. I was not saying you need to not be upset about it. I’m saying yes, this is a catastrophe. But the point is that this is a catastrophe that we cannot analyze as having been created by white supremacists.
And nevertheless, as you and I both know, that is what the leading pundits on race—and Ta-Nehisi Coates is just one of them—have been saying ever since then and I just find it–it’s wrong. . . . It doesn’t really qualify as analysis to say, “I can’t forgive you because you voted for Trump,” as if you’re proud of the idea that race is your wedge issue and you’re going to vote with your melanin, et cetera. It’s unsubtle.
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The question is whether or not a critical mass has the guts to allow ourselves to be called those names [racist, white supremacist] and to keep on. . . .
[If] you think you can stand being called names and then keep going to the grocery store, years will pass and ultimately those people end up just looking shrill and unless you are a white supremacist, in which case the truth will out, it’s better to hold your head up. And I really hope that more people connected with colleges and universities can do that . . . .
[Otherwise], we have this appearance . . . that this kind of unreflected intolerance, in the guise of intellect and higher reasoning, is somehow an advanced way of thinking—that somehow this is the final frontier of humane and intelligent thought. . . .
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[I] think that the establishment, the mainstream media establishment, of which I consider myself a part, is inclined to enshrine views on race to the left of what they genuinely believe. They think that’s what they’re supposed to put out here. Or at least that they’re supposed to give as much air as possible to that view.
But to tell you the truth, yes, me, to the extent that I think that my few views are worth hearing (laughter). I would refer to myself, or more to the point the things that Glenn Loury writes. . . .
These days Thomas Chatterton Williams is writing some really good stuff about race, where he’s fully aware that racism exists, but he’s not—well, I’m not going to say afraid—but he’s not reluctant to say that change has happened. And that just because the world isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean that we have to pretend that it’s still 1950.
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. . . . Jason Riley who writes for the Manhattan Institute these days has useful things to say. Jason is great. I’m not sure he always reaches out as far to try to convince the NPR-listening person as I would, but still he has very good things to say.
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[There's] a black Right how–Jason is a very mild-mannered guy. But there’s a black Right who’s basically saying, “Come on. Get over it,” and the problem is that for a certain kind of person, once you say, “Come on. Get over it,” their ears just shut down and if you don’t want those ears to shut down, then you have to talk around that, and you have to really think about where those people’s heads are at, and try to come up with points where you can really bring them offshore, and they can realize there are different ways of thinking about this.. . . .
There’s definitely a certain number of black professors—and I imagine it would find more if you circled out of humanities, and got into fields where there was less of a commitment to these sorts of issues in general—there are black professors who do not agree with the orthodoxy.
But yes, you have to pick your battles and we all have lives and if race issues aren’t what you wake up thinking about in the morning, you may decide I don’t agree with the usual but I’m more interested in doing my X, Y and Z. I don’t feel like making the usual suspects angry. I don’t feel like having students coming into my office angry. So I’m just going to kind of shut up.
In a way, for example, Stephen Carter is like that at Yale. If you go back 25 years, he was famous for about ten minutes for writing his book, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, where he expressed some views that are now associated with the black Right and that was refreshing. It was interesting. He did the interviews. He has never jumped back into that since then.
After that, he wrote books about religious faith. He has written – I’m aware of two novels, and I can tell you, I don’t know Carter. I’ve never heard him saying this, but it’s clear that he did not want to spend his career being a controversialist about race.
He figured that he is genuinely interested in issues of legal doctrine, in issues about religion, in being an artist, and he just didn’t want to be bothered. That’s my guess.
I’m sure there are other Stephen Carter sorts around. But to tell you the truth, when it comes to humanities in particular—and I would think also the law—a lot of the reason that you wind up pursuing those fields is because you’re pursuing an anti-discrimination agenda to an extent. And you may not put it that way but that’s going to be one of your primary commitments.
And even if it isn’t, the field tends to winnow out people who are not interested in that kind of thing. You might end up finding that if you are somebody who doesn’t believe the certain basic tenets, and isn’t interested in arguing them, that you don’t feel like you’re really one of the gang, you might fall out along the way.
And so I would say, “What field do I know?” And unfortunately, it’s not one of the sexy ones like political science or literature where I’d be used to talking to you about this. I belong to this weird little field called linguistics. But linguistics does extend into social issues. There are linguists who study language and society.
I would say that—of all [linguists] that I know . . . are studying what they study, whether they are white, black or something else, out of a commitment to a leftist agenda.
And I don’t mean that a leftist agenda is in itself bad. But the idea is you are advocating for people who have traditionally been downtrodden and dismissed, and what that means is that it definitely shapes your views. And I would say that most of these people are not ones who would be shouting down somebody who came to campus, by no means.
[On] the other hand, none of them would contradict people like that too loudly. There’s a basic sense of allegiance with the views of people like that. So they would say, “Oh, no. You should give people their say.” But that’s not something they would write an editorial about, and I frankly think with all due respect for them, they’re not too terribly upset to see a Charles Murray chased off of a campus.
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I remind you, I’m talking about people of all colors. I doubt if that’s not representative of how academia goes.
[I] know one person in linguistics who puckishly told me about 20 years ago that he votes Republican. But goodness gracious! You would never know it from anything he writes. . . . He would never say anything against the Ta-Nehisi Coates-and-Cornel West orthodoxy in public. . . .
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I think that the framing issue here is that we have a group of people who are telling us that we are at the end of intellectual history—that they found the answer, that all of the rules are supposed to govern civilized debate are suspendable here because we’re talking about something that is just simply a God-given truth.
And I say God on purpose because these people are, unbeknownst to them, exactly what Galileo was up against. These people don’t understand that their behavior about these issues is identical to that of people who are burning heretics, and really that includes that a lot of their views about what we’re supposed to call discrimination, et cetera—those views are not ones that humanity is necessarily going to view as accurate.
These people are not as correct as they think they are, and to the extent that they’re proceeding from a measure of correctness, we need to be brave enough to tell them that they need to persuade, not eliminate. And that if they don’t understand that, then they are no better than people who engage in book burning, and chase heretics out of town, and burn them at the stake.
It’s the exact same thing and the people who are doing all these things centuries ago felt as correct and as anointed and as self-satisfied as these. They must be made to realize that by those of us who are the majority. I hope that that tide can turn. But at this point, I really can’t say whether I’m optimistic enough.
(John McWhorter, Interview by Chris Martin, heterodoxacademy.org, December 14, 2017)
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