John McWhorter: The Limits of Antiracism

hello and good afternoon welcome to today's  commonwealth club program my name is deborah j   saunders and i'm pleased to be the moderator for  today's program i'm a fellow with the discovery   institute's chapman center for citizen leadership  and i'm a syndicated columnist you may have seen   me previously on the club's week-to-week program  which focuses on top news and current events   thus i'm pleased to be here today to discuss  john mcwarner's new book woke racism how a   new religion has betrayed black america it  came out last week and it is already making   waves and inspiring debates for its insightful  critiques of critical race theory and anti-racism   john's now a regular columnist for  the new york times and the author   of several books on linguistics and he's an  associate professor at columbia university   john welcome to the commonwealth club for  today's discussion on your new book but   one quick note before we jump in if you have any  questions for john or me please put them on the   youtube chat feature and they'll be forwarded to  forwarded to me during the program so john let's   begin um i love the book it never got boring and  it made me think about the world in a new way so   before i drill down tell us why did you write the  book what's it about and what do people who really   really don't like your viewpoint say about it  and how do you respond the book is written not as   some sweater vested starchy kind of person who is  writing a book that's designed to get money from   white conservatives that's what a lot of people  think about black quote-unquote conservative   thinkers although what i am is a liberal who  just gets on people's nerves but it's not that   this is not a right-wing black book especially  because i'm not of the right wing what it's for   is really mostly people left of center who  are listening to these voices from the radical   hard left and beginning to get a feeling that  somehow those people's view must be actual truth   rather than one facet of the left out of fear  because there's a certain kind of person who   now basically tells you that you're a racist  i.e what we now think of as a moral pervert   if you disagree with what is actually a very  narrow under thought and punitive range of views   i think that what we need is left of center but  constructive and unself-concerned positions on   what black people need in this country and  so i think that what most people are going   to say about it i've been being you know beaten  up on by that kind of person for my views on race   now since late in the clinton administration so  it's old old news and it's interesting because   you're only as good as what you did last week  and there are people these days who i can tell i   completely understand it i think a lot of people  think i first started writing for the daily beast   in about 2015 and that right now i'm making my way  that i'm climbing up and getting a little bit of   attention they think that i'm new at this and so  i think that's part of why they throw this at me   so hard but the main thing is that they say that  i am just writing this book because they're the   sorts of things that white people want to hear  and that's really not true the book is written   for black people as much as for white people i  think most black people especially once you step   about two feet beyond the intelligentsia and the  media agree with the sorts of things i'm saying   and this is the hard thing to the extent that a  certain kind of enlightened sensitive white person   wants to hear what i've written in woke racism  they should there's a facile idea that what   white people want to hear must automatically  be racist and letting white people off the   hook that's facile that's simplistic it could  be the probability does allow that what a white   person enjoys hearing is also the moral truth  and i'm taking a gamble that my book falls into   that realm so that's what woke racism is um  your book it starts out with the story of   food writer alison roman for the new york times  she criticized marie condo and she criticized   chrissy teigen for cashing in on commercialism  and and she was professionally destroyed for it   uh because condo is japanese and tegan's  half-white and people were saying she was a   racist and she was punching down you really  don't like that phrase punching down uh   she's she was suspended she eventually left the  new york times and you don't think she would have   been targeted five years ago and professionally  destroyed the way she was now can you talk about   how things change so quickly and uh if if you see  well and then i'll do a follow-up when you're done   yeah it's interesting you bring up her because  i opened the book with her and that really was   what sparked me to write the book it was something  that sounds that trivial i like her i like i like   the food that she was teaching me to make during  the pandemic and all of a sudden she was gone   and i noticed it and then i read why and that was  when something clicked in me and i thought this is   absolutely absurd and i could tell it was going to  continue and it most certainly did i thought this   is the new mood there is a newly influential group  of people who are going to keep doing this and i   can't have it so it wasn't me rubbing my hands  together and thinking hahahaha i'm going to write   a book that white people want to read about racism  it was where is my food columnist that was what   it really was and what that was was that she was  essentially fired for not trying to oh not trying   to battle power differentials there's an analysis  there the idea is that chrissy teigen is half thai   and therefore not completely white marie kondo  is a japanese citizen and you know that's many   things it's not a white american person or a white  european person and therefore to criticize them if   you're white is some sort of moral transgression  and all of us know except for roughly seven and   a half people who are probably responsible for  getting her fired that it makes no sense for her   to lose her job for these off-handed criticisms  of these two very rich very influential people   neither of whom think of themselves as at  the hands of white hegemony both of them   were perplexed at all of this and yet that's the  way it had to be and i thought wow and this is   the main thing about what i thought i thought the  people who got alice and roman fired thought they   were doing a good thing i wasn't thinking that  they're holding pitchforks and running down a hill   i thought these are peaceable sensible probably  overeducated people who genuinely thought that   what they did was the right thing but the thing  is most of the rest of us know that what they did   was a barbarity and i thought what is the gap  in understanding here and i thought it's this   issue of power being everything and i took it  from there did she make a mistake apologizing   before she was suspended would if she had if she  had fought back sooner would that have helped you   know she couldn't have known because the history  has been going by so quickly in her time you know   which was 15 minutes ago it was reasonable  for her to think that she could apologize   and be let alone but it absolutely didn't work  it only made it worse and we've all seen things   like that but all of that took a real real jump  starting in the spring of 2020. so in retrospect   no she should have said i haven't done anything  wrong you can say whatever you want to about me   and i will suffer the consequences but i will  admit no culpability but i understand why in the   spring of 2020 she didn't know that it had gotten  so bad that people like this needed to be standed   down on moss across the country she couldn't  have known now i'll bet she would have or if   some reason she asked me i would tell her  don't apologize and by the way thank you   for pronouncing hegemony because i you said  in the book a lot of people don't know how   to pronounce it i'm like do i or don't i now i  know i appreciate that you're a linguist and uh made me very insecure so are you seeing uh do you  think things are going to get worse or are they   going to get better are there signs that this  is ending or that people are suddenly realizing   that you're right that these people are that nice  people are actually going out and hounding people   uh trying to take away their jobs for trivial  uh faults what's the answer to that yeah   yeah i think it's changing and six months ago i  wasn't sure but at this point i'm seeing various   signs that there's going to be a push back against  this partly as we come out of the pandemic partly   as we see so much of it happening that we realize  that it's quote unquote a thing noticing how for   better or for worse the word woke is now a slur  that happened because this kind of person has has   annoyed and and and bemused so very many i hate to  say normal thinking people yeah um this is one of   my books that i can tell i shouldn't say this so  i'd like people to read it i can tell that this   book is going to be topical this is going to be  one which in 10 years is going to be seen as part   of a certain moment and it was part of a pushback  against something and i hope helped to serve a   purpose i do see it changing and i wanted to do  everything that i could to make sure that as many   people as possible understood that to resist this  particular extreme is not racist no matter what   the elect as i call them say and no matter whether  that elect person is black it's not racist other   things are so i hope this book will be a part of  that well and by the way you you quote jody bottom   and you take the phrase the elect from jody bottom  uh but he was talking about religious people and   you're talking about people whose politics have  become a religion um i i have to tell you you've   totally radicalized me because i i spent 24 years  as a conservative columnist for the san francisco   chronicle and i was really tender about how i  dealt with people but you're saying and one of   the things i really got out of your book is you're  telling people don't apologize for your viewpoints   ditch the anguish don't back down when people  start challenging you a certain way don't try   to be nice about it give it back to them i was on  twitter like yesterday and i was thinking about   what we were going to talk about i just jumped on  someone's throat you've made me sort of feel that   when people when people start trying to challenge  you and make you feel like maybe they're going to   say you're a racist that you've just got to slam  them back yeah and you know i'm not a belligerent   person but i think that when it comes to this type  we need to simply stand up in the same way that   they're standing up and look them in the eye and  say no and i use the analogy of bopping a shark on   the nose and i don't want people to think that i  mean you're supposed to be physical with anybody   but with this elect kind of person and not just  anybody who's arguing from the left but this type   who is poised to call you a moral pervert in the  public square if you don't agree with their views   you just have to say no i am not a racist i  don't agree with what you're saying and you can   say whatever you want about me wherever you will  i am not changing my mind if we say that enough   to the extent that we can within the parameters  of our lives to this kind of person then this   will change but it does mean that a lot of people  and unfortunately here we're talking about mainly   white people have a responsibility which is that  not only do you have to know that racism is more   than burning crosses on people's lawns that was  not the most natural way of thinking for white   people and i think most white people got that  message but now the idea has to be get used to   being called a racist in social media realize  that the world will keep spinning your life in   most cases will keep going but in the meantime you  can't give these people what they want because if   you give it to them they'll take it and if you  really want a world run by people who have taken   what is supposed to be a kind of compassion into  a social justice religion it's not about fairness   but about virtue signaling if you don't want that  world these people have to be told to sit back   down not to leave the room but just to sit back  down and what i really hope is that people have   that backbone and they must understand this  i am not telling white people to tell black   people to sit down my main mental image is it's  a white person who you're telling to sit down   although there are certainly black people like  this although it's not the way most black people   think that's something i wish more people would  keep in mind yeah you you make that really clear   in the book i mean one of the things that you  write about is you say that uh basically the elect   they they they they seem to they they think as if  black people are hot house flowers who will be who   will wilt under certain kinds of uh criticism and  so that every anything that you see that might be   dysfunctional behavior among certain individuals  is something that you have to uh coach in   incredibly sensitive ways uh and and what you say  is what basically you've seen people do is lower   their standards in order to seem nicer and and not  racist can you talk about that for a minute please   yeah i reject the idea that to be a black person  is to walk around in a constant existential kind   of pain because of things that happen hundreds  of years ago or things that happened 50 years ago   or even a terrible murder of a black man two years  ago there's this idea that every black individual   walks around carrying the entire history of the  race upon them and therefore you have to be very   sensitive when you talk about race issues around  us and that you have to basically come as close   as you can to giving in to any demand that any  of us make and it follows naturally from that   that you give black people a pass you cannot  expect serious competition to be engaged in by   such a person who's so burdened a little but  essentially what would be a consolation prize   to other people is supposed to be the top prize  for us i reject that and i don't reject that as   somebody who is uniquely rock ribbed i don't  reject that because i didn't grow up poor i   reject that because i think it's a natural way of  thinking which black people in the past generally   had there was no push from the intelligentsia and  the media to adopt yes i can't as a mantra and   just last week condoleezza rice was on the  view expressing exactly the views that i'm   expressing and she grew up in the segregated  south there's nothing unique about where she   came from in that way she titled her autobiography  extraordinary ordinary people who told her this   and this is she grew up in birmingham of  all places and i don't mean in england   in alabama where hideous things were happening  to black people in the street she knew the four   little girls who were killed in the church there  and yet she knew that yes we can't is not progress   that was an idea that settled in in the late 60s  in certain circles and that notion was really   magnified and sent out to mainstream america in  the wake of george floyd's murder in particular   i reject it and i reject it thinking of myself  as utterly ordinary in that i want people to you   know i want people to put on the patch the mental  patch of thinking when somebody says they're going   to call me a racist on twitter look them in the  eye and call them a racist fat that's that's weird   i'm using that word patch because people use it in  linguistics and i shouldn't but i want people to   get rid of that little weird blip in thinking that  they've been taught that black people are weak   that black people can't be subject to real  standards because of slavery and jim crow and   redlining i don't think our ancestors wanted us  to think of it that way so one of the reasons your   book woke racism how a new religion has betrayed  black america uh one of your points is that when   you have so many people uh in the elect and we'll  get in into what the elect is in a second thinking   that the important thing is what how they feel  about other people and think about other people   not looking for practical things solutions  about disparity that that deserves that that's a   disservice to everybody in this country um and uh  can you can you talk to that for a second please   sure it's really very simple a lot of the people  that we're talking about are under the impression   that showing that you understand that societal  racism exists is really key they think that   showing that you understand that is a necessary  prelude to changing the world and the problem is   says who in in what sense where'd you get that  nobody would have had any idea what that meant   60 years ago in the civil rights movement so  what's the proof now and i imagine some very   sophisticated political science or sociology  professors have answers and you know maybe   some academic journals that nobody's ever read or  some books that i haven't gotten to but the point   hasn't been made in any mainstream way that we can  say that all of those people who are pretending   this know it's just that it feels right frankly  it's easy so you stand up and show that you know   something and everybody does high fives but what  have you done for somebody who's suffering no one   really asked that question except someone like  robin deangelo in literally the worst book ever   written it's the worst book i've ever read and if  there's one thing that i have done a lot of it's   read books worst book ever written she actually  says she actually anticipates this question that   if you're asking okay but what are you actually  going to go do it's called solutionism you're   going too fast you're letting yourself off the  hook because what you're really supposed to think   about is how you're complicit in racist system but  someone like me standing on the outside asks why   how is this better than what happened before  and the thing is if somebody can give an answer   you can't give the answer with the attitude  of well of course it's because no one has   said what it was we're having a whole national  discussion where nobody explains that despite   the fact that it's a painfully obvious question  so my book in part is designed to ask it and to   show that frankly there is no answer so i want  to get to questions from viewers but i have   just one area i want to go over with you first  you said the the most uh effective way to help uh   bla uh black people poor black people  in america is to do three things   and the war on drugs teach phonics and offer  more vocational training you don't mention family so no so i i was surprised but obvi and obviously  you think it's really obvious so explain to me very i'm sorry if i see you no  no i'm not going to say that i know many people who i know many people who um have written very  compelling pieces about family values and   the value of their being two parents in the  home um i certainly know what the expansion   of welfare in the late 60s did to black  communities it's a little told story   i now and then said i wish somebody would  make a movie about that because it would   get it into the consciousness of what  that did but in general my feeling is   to write about the family to write this is what  people should do more people should get married   more men should stay in relationships that  they maybe don't want to be in i don't see   how effective that would be that's all it's not  that i don't agree there's the wonderful statistic   that you know if you graduate from high school  and you get a job and you know you don't have a   child until you're married or at least you know  permanently involved you will not be poor yeah   that's true but in terms of saying to people out  in the world that it seems to me that people have   been saying that that you can date it to roughly  you could date it to the moynihan report but   there have been things being written since about  the mid 80s and what i'm interested in is results   and it doesn't seem to work you can't tell people  to have different family values it seems to me   that those values will fall out of other policy  decisions that will shape the world around people   that's my feeling and that's why there was  nothing about i'll bet single parenthood is   not in the book i never wrote i didn't write that  and that's why you had one teensy teensy mention   because i was listening for looking for it but you  know one of the things i mean ending the war on   drugs that's a great idea too but how realistic  is that i mean there have been people who've   been writing about that for a long time hey it's  even hard to get schools to use to teach phonics   i mean that's not even easy and more vocational  training same thing i mean the last two things   they're less controversial but it's hard to get  them through and in the war on drugs i just don't   um and i know that i know that you want to get  in the complete war on drugs which just doesn't   seem all that realistic either or am i wrong  is there someplace that's starting to do that   really legitimate questions and i include them  because over the past 20 years and 20 is not 50.   i haven't been around that long but over the past  20 years i've seen cracks in the plaster on those   things and so the fact that to be graphic nowadays  you can walk down new york streets and smell   marijuana right up your nose and there's somebody  just standing right there to be honest i think   that that's fine you know if you can drink bourbon  why should you not be able to marijuana that's   the beginning and i know an awful lot of people  who have agitated for it to go further including   i don't have time these days because i'm a dad  even some branches of the naacp were opening up to   that idea despite the fact that in most of those  cases you're dealing with conservative ministers   where that's not where they live but they were  beginning to open up to it so i thought it's not   impossible but deborah you're right that's that  that's a tough one with vocational education we're   seeing some interest in that sort of thing going  back to the obama administration i think that   could be made to float phonics is a whole other  story but yeah i i take your point okay uh from   viewers uh first question critical race theory uh  seems to exploit the power of words to tongue-tie   everyone including me um how do you counteract  such deliberate attempts to redefine common words you know you can't counteract people's reformation  of words it's inevitable in language change it's   almost never deliberate but unfortunately with  critical race theory our discussion is polluted   by the fact that there are certain legal papers  written decades ago that you know nobody but a   legal scholar could love and then there's that  way of thinking having percolated into graduate   schools in the humanities and social sciences  and also education schools such that philosophies   based on those ideas are now being promulgated  and foisted upon eight and nine-year-olds   and so someone says what is critical race theory  doing in our classrooms and the smart response   is supposedly to say who's teaching these obscure  legal scholars in class when that's obviously not   what anybody needs i think that at this point  it's maybe handy that what's happening in the   classes might be called crt and that we all know  what that's an abbreviation for but that little   i've written a few columns trying to cut through  that so i've done a podcast about it but a podcast   episode about it my lexicon valley which i'm not  trying to push but i've never written out a full   column about only that but i did do a lexicon  valley about what crt means you can't help that   but what dismays me the most actually on this  day that we're doing this i'm realizing this   is a thing is that a lot of people left of center  really don't think that there's anything going on   in classrooms they think that we should be  talking about january 6th and we should but   there's there's no problem with anything going  on in our schools whatever you call it and the   people like me are just making that up based  on having read maybe one story about one school   i think there is in us who know that that's not  true and i'm thinking we need to we need to craft   that message better because a lot of really smart  well-intentioned people think that we're just   making things up because that's what a certain  kind of person tells them and they understandably   listen to them so there's a messaging issue but  language will always change terms will always   be messy we just have to analyze what the mess is  which is where my work is beginning to intersect   but my work is beginning to straddle linguistics  and race more than it ever has because i'm   beginning to have to use both halves of my brain  lately because yeah the way we talk about these   things often is because of how annoying the change  of meaning and words can be because it could   happen so quickly so today i'm i am in virginia  as we speak and it is election day nothing going   on down there yeah derrick democrat tara mcauliffe  says that they don't teach crt in public schools   he's wrong and you know and if he means they  don't teach the the works of richard delgado and   kimberly crenshaw he's right but if he means that  all the parents and friends who write me saying   guess what sorts of things my child's history  teacher is teaching and i wrote the principle and   the principal wrote me back something in hebrew  that doesn't make any sense and won't listen   that's happening across the country it doesn't  have to be critical race theory itself but if your   kids are being taught that whiteness is a kind of  inherent guilt if your kids are being taught that   blackness is a kind of eternal victimhood if your  kids are being taught that all subjects need to be   looked at through the lens of what they signal  for power relations especially between white   and brown people that's what your kids are being  taught to any appreciable extent such that they   would come home and say i'm not enjoying this mom  that's critical race theory and anybody who denies   that that's an issue either doesn't know and you  know some people find education policy boring   you know i don't care about football i don't know  anything about it there are many people who live   for football i get it maybe you don't care about  education or you're being willfully naive because   you're trying to placate a certain base and get  elected and i would completely understand that too   but that means that we can't listen to that  fight between those two for a reflection of   what's actually happening either way yes there is  something really scary going on in education today   so i have another question uh john  what do you think of the 1619 project um the truth about it is that a lot of it  is just a history lesson and it's a history   lesson that you know [ __ ] our ear more to  power differentials than we might be used to   but there's nothing wrong with it what got it a  pulitzer was the claim that the revolutionary war   was fought to a significant degree of people not  wanting to let go of slavery the idea being that   to to to lose the war would mean  that you could not have plantations   it would seem to me that that claim has been  disproven and that's what i think of the 1619   project any discussion of it that purports that  a central and highly celebrated tenet of it   was not disproven is a discussion that i have a  hard time participating in i'll put it i'll put it   that way there are a lot of things you have that  you just have lost patience for these prevalent   beliefs that go against what you have what you  understand as an academic um and let me you teach   at columbia uh what are your students like these  days do you think they're prepared uh you've been   teaching for a while are they better prepared now  are they um are they are they up to the challenges   how how how prepared do you think  they are for university education   you know deborah i don't know the answer to that  question yet because um of mundane things which is   that everything went crazy in the spring of 2020  but by then universities were online and that puts   a real filter between you and students i don't  i don't get to talk to them offline much and so   i just have taught them in classes and now we're  just now back on campus and you know honestly with   everybody in masks which they are at columbia  it muffles communication and experience once   again and i hate to say this it's not that i'm an  anti-massacre or an anti-vaxxer or anything but   having to always have that thing on my face means  that i avoid being on campus because i want to   breathe and smell the world so i'm not really back  on campus yet except to sit in rooms with cloth on   my face and it's not the same so i don't know  that's a question i'll have more of a sense of   in the spring when i'll be spending more time on  campus and something'll be able to happen outside   and so you're not always talking through this  curtain and i know that sounds trivial but it   really does affect how how you smell a campus  how you get a sense of what's going on now if   you had asked me before the pandemic i would have  said that the idea that the campus is being taken   over by tenured radicals i've always thought that  was vastly exaggerated until roughly june of 2020   when suddenly all of that hysteria from 1997  came true which is why i started getting up on   a soapbox so that's my real view i used to say my  students don't act like that i said that for years   and years and colombia has been almost oddly  immune to the sorts of scenes that you've seen   at yale for example that that simply hasn't  happened around me i don't know those kids has   something happened since then i'm inclined not to  think so but i just can't say anything yet because   i can't report from the ground you know one of the  things i'm thinking as i'm reading this book is   one of the messages is they can go after anyone  for for the most inconsequential thing uh do   you have a plan i mean it's i'm guessing that no  one do you have a plan if obviously you're still   there you're still at the new york times you're  still at columbia you're still doing things have   you has anyone ever gone after you and how did you  deal with it or if if it hasn't happened how what   how will you um that's a good question i should  say that that has not happened at columbia yet   i have gotten no signals of that kind from any of  the higher ups however i would be an idiot not to   wonder whether it could happen because  you never know and all it would take is   one person who decides to interpret one thing  that i write or say and it would snowball and i   i have no reason to think that if it snowballed  beyond a certain point that i could not be be let   go yes that that could happen and so i've spent  a lot of time since the middle of 2020 because   i'm not going to stop i'm not going to back down i  had spent a lot of time setting things up so that   i would continue to be able to pay my mortgage  and continue to be able to make a living and   i've done that that job is complete and so i'm  not that worried my sense is watch this come   and you know bite me on the quote unquote elbow  in a couple of years my sense is that i'm not   going to lose my job for one thing the pendulum is  shifting and there's some other factors it would   be a pretty bad look to fire me for those things  but if it does happen i will land on my feet   and i will continue to say things so  that's the idea i realize i cannot let   that possibility keep me from having my  say because i think that that said that say   needs to be had and i hope that some other black  professors will follow me and from what i'm seeing   that's gonna happen and so yeah that's that's how  that is you know another thing deborah is that um   i get the feeling that if they  were thinking of doing that   i'm 56. well one pragmatic discussion might  be well how long is he going to hang in anyway   i'm not sure they know that i i'm going to keep  doing this into my 80s if i can but they might   think well just let him do it for another seven  or eight years so yes i've thought about it but i   have not seen any poor tent of it yet well i'm  glad to hear that um jody bottom is a friend   of mine and you mentioned him in your book so  please talk about the elect for a second and why   and why you decided to use that term in your book  as well since joe um thank you to jody because the   jody it's the title you know the titles of my  books are never the ones that i originally had   and all of my materials for the book woke racism  on my laptop now the label the book is called the   elect and there's a part of me that will always  call it that the elect is um my name for these   people where it isn't that they're speaking why  is my voice cracking like i'm henry aldridge   it isn't that they are seeking power it isn't  that they're mean it isn't that they're children   it's important to realize the elect is not  about college campuses the elect can be   in their 70s these are people who feel that they  have a good news with a capital g and a capital n   that the world needs to listen to and that this  is news that is so incontestably good that it's   worth hurting people in order to make things so  that the world works according to these tenets   but the way they conduct themselves and their  utter imperviousness to any kind of logic or   or reason is reminiscent of people who think of  themselves as chosen and these are people who do   think of themselves as having a precious higher  wisdom that they feel is so precious that they   will impose it upon the world via whatever means  necessary and you make the point of saying the   the worst thing about this phenomenon is they're  not mean people these are people who think they're   nice good people and that they're doing the  right thing when they go after somebody like that   um one of the things that you that you had  mentioned earlier and it's also in the book   the elect scare you more than january 6.  could you talk about that for a second please   yeah yeah um you have to ask about institutions  what institutions are people like that penetrating   and the snappy answer these days is that those  people are overturning voting laws and that   they're they're trying to get black people not to  vote and i understand where that's coming from but   i can't help noticing that on the ground once  you get past the symbolism it is revolting that   somebody tries to suppress the black vote in order  to keep democrats from having too high a tally   it's revolting on many levels but it doesn't work  as well as we're often told that's the thing that   i think the left doesn't want to admit it's a  terrible gesture from the right but it doesn't   actually work that well and in the meantime what  i see happening with the elect is that they're   taking over academia the media the arts and the  law they're taking over all four of those things   and there's a certain kind of person that will  tell me that those things aren't as important as   people trying to keep black people from voting and  failing you know what that makes no sense to me   and i think that makes no sense to a lot  of people to ask why it's a big deal that   a certain group of people are deeply affecting  the way we teach learn question judge and think   and paint and make music that's what these people  are doing to say that's no big deal is frankly   philistine and i don't think most people who  ask that question really believe that it's a   it's a valid point this is huge these people are  taking over institutions and we have to stop them   or we don't live in what we lived in before notice  i'm not about to say something about america   i'm not that corny this is not about some  sort of jingoism just what we had most of us   aren't running around thinking about ourselves as  americans just what we had as modern enlightened   people i will not watch that turned over by people  who think that treating me like a child and then   doing high fives over the fact that you did  it and it shows that you know racism exists   because george floyd died unjustly no that is  not the way social history is supposed to proceed   i won't allow it and that's why i wrote woke razo  so you talk about january 6 as being an effort to   suppress the black vote that i mean i thought  that was people who thought wrongly that trump   had won and that's why they went to the  capitol are you sort of conflating what   happened then with what's happened afterward or am  i missing something no no i'm i'm trying to give   the people who say this the benefit of the  doubt the idea is that the people who think that   trump really should have won the election  where they think that trump won the election   and that therefore procedures needed to be  overturned in order to make it look that way are   the same people who are interested in overturning  basic voting procedure and making sure that black   people don't vote much kind of a stretch but  the idea being people who want to interfere   with the electoral mechanisms in order to have  things their own way and then there's a kind   of a sloppy conflation of one aspect of the right  wing with another that doesn't really work either   but i'm trying to address what these people throw  out because that is a common view at this point   so a question from a viewer why do you find the  argument that music theory is racist so ridiculous because it was based on a very thin premise a  truly brilliant person looked at mr schenker   heinrich schenker's work and found that i mean  this is really the the basis of it first of all   that all of the people who get the most praise are  white but i think they're one reasons for that and   two it was a very long time ago and and we live  now but two the music theory in very obscure ways   has to do with certain elements being foregrounded  and certain elements being backgrounded or more   specifically elements that are in the background  where if you do certain things you can make them   sound like they're in the foreground that whole  issue of hierarchy this music theorist claims   is parallel to views about hierarchy and i'm going  to say that word again hegemony and racism thank   you i swear to you that's the thesis i tried i  read this work that's the thesis and the problem   is not that somebody wrote something that ordinary  conditions nobody would pay any attention to that   it's that music departments across the country are  inviting that person to speak and share his views   and are discussing his views and i know in certain  cases letting those views affect their curriculum   that's the problem and make make sure  i'm not sure who will be looking at this   i don't think that the person in question  is making any particular money it's this   has nothing to do with me being jealous  of career success or anything like that   influence of that person based on such a  thin premise it's a perfect absurdity and yet   that's being treated as something significant  not only is it condescending to black brilliance   but it's a waste of time and thinking about  good music of any kind okay another viewer uh   does the ongoing discussion on race submerge class  considerations which are central to many problems   socioeconomics should be held much more front and  center in today's problems and this is the thing   as if there's only one thing it used to be  that people of a certain type you could call   them proto-elects would complain about the  racialization of poverty when you talk about   poverty why is it always a black woman sitting  on the steps with her kids that was considered   the greatest injustice in the 80s and the 90s well  now we don't talk about poverty that way anymore   and the whole discussion of there being a black  underclass that doesn't bring in that there's   a white underclass who are just as stuck you know  the whole meth addiction etc jp vance all of that   is very real and it's very talked about it's about  class these days but now that's wrong you can't   talk about class because you're ignoring that a  meth addicted person with only half of their teeth   who can't take care of their kids and will never  make a real living again and is living in a shack   somewhere in a distant place and has no prospects  for the future has white privilege that's today's   discussion and that's become especially especially  important for many people since about june 2020   that's not a human discussion that is an exercise  that's that's kabuki and it's obvious that a more   rational america at this point will be moving  towards thinking there are black people who   need help they're white people who need the  same help being black now and middle class   is normal and even default you have to admit you  have to polish the crown where you earned one but   no we're not allowed because we're supposed to  think of blackness and racism as the eternal root   that rends our nation i sincerely believe that  that view today is more performance than pragmatic   reality and you know if it makes me a white  supremacist to call that out i guess i am one but   i think then we need to redefine what we mean by  white supremacy because frankly the poor white   person who i just described is not supreme there's  nothing supreme about that and to master the   mental exercise of supposing that somebody like  that is privileged just because they're not brown   is an absurdity it's a waste of time we're only  alive for about 80 years and we have things to do   it's time to stop those mind games and get down  to really real social justice which and you know   for many people this is a horrible thing to think  social justice should apply to some white people   too it's always been like that in this country  um i i have a question about uh perceptions so   pew research does these polls where they ask  people about racism globally and they looked at   they talked to people from countries and people  in singapore spain japan italy france the uk   they all thought the united states was more racist  in their own countries uh peace also found that uh   more black college students experience racism  say they do than than high school students and   um younger people are more likely to  see discrimination than older people   uh can you talk about that do you mean that older  people are more likely to see it than younger   no they're less likely to say  they see it than younger people   are you old older okay yeah i think that it's  obvious that there's an extent to which education   part of a modern education is that you're educated  into understanding the nature of oppression   which is important but that it can also teach a  black person that they are suffering more than   for example their ancestors and by ancestors  i mean say grandparents ancestors they know   would say that they were and so i'm particularly  interested in that a college student is more   likely to say they experience racism than a 14  or a 15 year old and you think to yourself are   you really experiencing more because you're 20  many people would say that you would experience   it more when you were 14 when people were less  trained to be polite and so it shows you that   there is a slip between and this is hard there's a  slit between what people will attest and what the   reality is and it's not that somebody's doing  that for malevolent reasons but nevertheless   there's a certain coaching that i think a  lot of black people undergo not consciously   but we have to watch out for that and  for a white person to call that out   takes a certain amount of bravery and i know  that most white people wouldn't be up for it   and i understand why but that reality is there  and it's as for other people in other countries   all i can say is that if what they mean is that  they saw the footage of george floyd being killed   i'm sorry but that's not a metric of whether  this country is more racist than their country   we'd have to look at more than that and i'm sorry  but honestly that is what many foreigners are led   to think they're shown videos of certain truly  disgusting incidents with the police and they   assume that that is something that happens  all over the country all the time only to   black people when actually those things happen  more to white people that's a whole other thing   or it used to be that the same kind of european  or japanese person would be shown film of black   ghettos and they would think well the only reason  for that must be that black people are not liked   and therefore america is a more racist country  then and you know in many cases the country in   question has a kind of racism that's endemic and  more naked than anything that ever happens here   so we have to be careful about that these days  the measure of america's racism is thought to be   what happened to one man in the spring of 2020  captured on tragically clear video okay i i'm   glad the world is seeing that but you can't base  junior sociology on that one thing japan is less   racist than the united states i beg to differ  frankly but the george floyd video is hideous   yeah yeah i understand that i mean in in america  becomes more multi-racial every year there are   there are more children uh born into not not just  white families or black families multi-racial   families asians latinos how how is that  affecting how people are looking at these issues   of wokeness well you know if you think  about the general trajectory of things   we're at a point where i would say that that's  based on the schematic fiction that they're   white people and black people and some latinos  scattered in there and what are we going to do   about these asians and some people seem to  be from india that's the discussion that's   not going to make any sense after about another  generation you can just look at little people now   and if you ask whether i'm thinking about my own  kids whose mother is white the answer is yes it's   going to get to the point where there are so many  people of age who are mutts where the whole issue   of them having to own that they're black because  they're one quarter black or sometimes even half   or you know the mother is ty and the father  is from bosnia what is the child and the child   is just nothing and i think that that kind of  person frustrates the people who like to talk   about white versus black because they want to keep  it down to these certain categories they want to   for reasons that make sense to them they want  to foster this constant guilt the truth is when   i discuss the sorts of issues that i discuss  i think to myself i'm putting an awful lot of   energy into a discussion that's going to just  look like something some people a long time   ago were arguing too much about in 50 years but i  can't help being part of my own time and you know   no is racism going to go away it's probably not  will there be some other form of discrimination   that comes into play i suspect classism will  become sharper in that future world but we're   becoming mutts more and more it depends on the  neighborhood but there are plenty of mutts in even   for example distant poor white communities there  are a lot of interracial marriages in that world   now although we don't talk about it much there are  a lot of interracial marriages in the black ghetto   interesting um i'm i'm going to go to your  linguistic background for a second here   uh i'll read two sentences and you can explain  the difference banks are less likely to give   loans to black people black people are  less likely to get loans from a bank i shouldn't laugh i read that article too  um i don't hear the difference that much   but i can respect that the person supposes  that if you put it as banks are less likely   to give loans to black people it'll make  you think about what it is about the banks   where i lose that person is that that person just  assumes that the answer is that banks are racist   in some way that the person sitting behind  the desk and assessing the person for a loan   is partly affected by the fact  that the person has brown skin   if you look into issues like that but you have to  look in and frankly finance banks it's boring no   offense to anybody who's in that business but the  person who wrote that article thinks that frankly   i think that i'm an armchair linguist you're  not going to look into the details probably but   it's not as simple as just skin color in those  cases so that person is assuming that banks   are racist banks are probably a teeny bit racist  redlining banks in 2021 as opposed to 1914 or 1952   have all sorts of reasons for doing things  where it will be hard to identify bigotry   or discrimination as the reason i'm not sure that  that person talking about language that way would   be open to a discussion about that but i see where  she's coming from um i looking through your bio uh   some things that i found of interest you went to  simon's rock i did i went to monument mountain   regional high school in great barrington also the  home of w.e.b du bois by the way and you've been   to the mahay that's right yes that's correct  so tell me about your education you went to   simon's rock you in the decisions that you made  in your education you you you speak french i mean what are the why did you take this path to get  where you are academically you have the specialty   in linguistics um tell me about what interested  you in it and and why you made the choices you did   um i didn't make choices i'm a more feckless  person than most people would have reason   to believe i went to four different schools  i went to simon's rock for two years most   people only went there for two years back  then had no idea what i wanted to do i got   an aaa in french only because i was  good at it and i didn't know what else   then i got a ba from rutgers i went to rutgers  for no reason at all my parents were not um not   as connected to getting their kids into great  schools as today's parents would be parents   weren't as into that then i certainly didn't care  i should have gone to swarthmore but they wouldn't   take me i could have gone to haverford but we  forgot to we've got to hand in a financial aid   form on time and they were strict about it rutgers  was to fall back i wound up at rutgers i met some   wonderful people at rutgers who i still know but i  shouldn't have been there in general it was it was   two years on pause i learned a lot about ragtime  while i was at rutgers and then i went to nyu   because i wanted to live in new york city for a  while and i wanted to read more books and so i   got basically a night school degree in american  studies just a masters i read some books i got   to read the great gatsby i got to read you know  i got to read and see how i don't even remember   but i got to read all sorts of great things  with aging paperbacks i'm looking at right now   and then i spent a couple of years just kind of  spinning my wheels and i thought i know the the   least feckless thing i did is that when i was in  my very early 20s i thought i know i'm a professor   i can feel that that's what i am but i don't  know what of and then i thought well i seem to   have this facility with languages and the only  reason i knew that that meant linguistics was   because i was working in a copy center at nyu to  make ends meet and people would bring in journals   and things to be copied and there was one person  who was a linguist there who would bring in that's   the only reason i knew what linguistics was and i  thought well i guess maybe i can do that that is   really the story and so i got a phd in it because  i could fake being good at it which is really the   best that i did while i was actually getting  the degree and none of this had anything to do   with becoming a race commentator you would have  perplexed me if you had said to me in 1992 that   you're probably going to be best known for saying  contrary things about race that make people hate   you that is not what i was planning but i just  throughout the 90s i thought things get better   and better for black people despite rodney king  despite this that and the other thing and i found   that the educated view was that things had not  changed for black people since 1960 and i didn't   understand why and there's a part of me it's  partly just being tidy i couldn't rest with it   i couldn't say these people are crazy because they  weren't i couldn't say these people were stupid   because a lot of them were smarter than me but i  thought they are not processing reality why are   they exaggerating what is this and that is what  slowly led i think it was particularly fueled by   oj you know it's at the point where we can say  it was painfully clear that the man murdered two   people and yet for many many years black people  of all educational stripes were pretending not   to see it i just i didn't get it and that's  what led me to write losing the race in 2000   i had no idea it would become so widely read i  wrote it kind of as therapy i happened to write   quickly and i thought i'm going to put this out  there so people will know what i think and maybe   some younger black people will see that i'm not  crazy just like shelby steele taught me that i'm   not crazy and lo and behold losing the race was a  minor bestseller and more low and behold i never   stopped being asked to write editorials i kept  on thinking well i guess i'm having 15 minutes   then it became a half hour and then around 08 i  thought you know people are not going to leave   me alone and so then i i settled into it but for  me it really was just i want to be a professor i   like languages i thought i was going to write the  book on looney tunes and not the minstrel ones all   of them i've seen 850 of the 1000 i love them to  pieces and somehow that didn't happen and so here   i am just just dealing with how life actually came  out but it's all just been a crap shoot really but   i wouldn't have it any other way  i mean i have to tell you i'm   it's a great book i highly recommend  it uh and i'm curious there it is   it is it's a great book it's a it's it's a fast  read i mean there's there's no there's no space   where it slows down that you just keep moving on  i recommend it to everyone what's your next book   well i want to say folks just because there was  a little normal crosstalk there what i was saying   there was not it is a great book i said there  it is because i'm always so impressed to see   it the physical object i was saying there it is  i don't know if it's a great book um you know   deborah i don't know what the next book is and  people are going to think i'm just saying this   to seem cute or something but i thought the  next book is not going to be some angry screed   you know it's exhausting representing a book  that never smiles and so i thought i wanted   to be something fun and i actually thought i  wonder if i could get it by my agent to write   the book on looney tunes from 1930 to last week  because i think they are high art wouldn't you   know that god damn it somebody just came out with  a book about the looney tunes and so now i can't   i can't do it somebody else wrote it and so jamie  weinman damn you and so now i have to write it   about something else and you know i don't know  i think the next book is going to be something   about language and um that's as far as i've gotten  i have no idea because to be honest i did two in   this calendar year and my brain is fried so i need  a break so my next book is going to be about you   know what it's going to be about not race maybe  that'll be the title maybe you can go against   the looney tunes book that already came out maybe  you could have a different a counter theory on it   my looney tunes that's right yeah really wrong on  looney tunes anyway it's a thought um i think i'm   supposed to close this down now if i'm wrong uh  well i guess it'll be some dead space afterward   um anyway unfortunately that is all all the time  we have for today's program i want to thank the   commonwealth club for hosting it and i really want  to encourage everyone to purchase a copy of john   mcquarter's terrific new book woke racism wherever  books are sold and really you can you can read it   in the weekend and feel smarter afterward uh and i  also want to encourage everyone to become a member   of the commonwealth club visit the commonwealth  club club site at www.commonwealthclub.org and learn how to become a member this program and  others like it will be posted soon on the website   site ah okay my mouth is done thank you  so much john i really appreciate it i'm   deborah j saunders in this commonwealth  club program is now adjourned thank you you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

Views: 26,225

Keywords: CommonwealthClub, CommonwealthClubofCalifornia, Sanfrancisco, Nonprofitmedia, nonprofitvideo, politics, Currentevents, CaliforniaCurrentEvents, #newyoutubevideo, #youtubechannel, #youtubechannels, johnmcwhorter

Id: 5_vn84FKqqU

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021