Book Review of Woke Racism
Many of us have assigned Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped and How to be an Antiracist, or Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (THUG) in an attempt to diversify the curriculum. Such works are derived from or contain elements of Critical Race Theory and promote antiracist thoughts and actions. New York Times columnist and Columbia linguistics professor, John McWhorter, has a new book out, Woke Racism, that is offered as a counter to works and theories such as these. In it, McWhorter, who classifies himself as a Black liberal, details how evangelical antiracism is harmful to the country and offers counterproposals for how to improve Black life. McWhorter’s book will be useful in a classroom setting to show that there are competing views on race and racism, apart from Kendi’s and Thomas’s.
In Woke Racism, McWhorter classifies antiracists as religious zealots. He rejects terms such as “social justice warrior” and the “Woke mob” and instead dubs their members the “Elect,” a religious order intent on scrubbing racism from American life. To him, the Elect has crafted a set of tenets surrounding race and racism that are illogical, contradictory, and “translate into nothing whatsoever.” A couple of examples provided by McWhorter illustrate this doublespeak: 1) Silence about racism is violence; elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own; 2) you must strive eternally to understand the experiences of black people; you can never understand what it is to be black.
McWhorter bases his assertion that antiracism is a religion on two basic principles: 1) antiracists refuse to concede or acknowledge that other points of view have merit thereby ostracizing dissent; and 2) antiracist doctrine contains numerous contradictions such that in order to be a true believer, you must suspend disbelief. In other words, just take it on faith that systemic racism exists and erasing it will cure all for Blacks in America. McWhorter paints a compelling case for his religious metaphor. He points out that antiracism has a creation myth (all racism’s ills trace to the landing of the first slaves on American soil in 1619); a Satan-like villain (White racists); and a Puritanical sense of casting out heretics (believe or be labeled a racist).
According to McWhorter, numerous recent examples of people losing their jobs or their speaking engagements over relatively minor transgressions (to name two, a professor being railroaded for using a Chinese word that resembles the N-word and a Dean expressing concern in light of the Floyd protests that everyone’s lives matter and no one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe) show that the time has come for the rest of us to start fighting back against this mob mentality. Castigating the Elect for being posers, McWhorter believes that antiracists are not truly threatened or injured by perceived transgressions. They pose as injured only to demonstrate that the views they disagree with are supposedly evil. McWhorter bluntly states that the Elect’s sole purpose is to decry racism rather than to improve Black lives.
More controversially, McWhorter claims that this new religion harms Black people by limiting their educational and economic advancement. This occurs by ignoring or rationalizing the disruptive and violent behavior of young Black students (in the name of equalizing discipline), by eliminating gifted programs because they are predominantly populated by Whites and Asians, and by continuing affirmative action programs, particularly at elite colleges and universities. All of this, in McWhorter’s mind, serves to reduce opportunity for the advancement of minorities, not increase it.
These are themes that McWhorter has explored before. Woke Racism is the third in a line of books by McWhorter on race: the first, Losing the Race (published in 2000), and the 2nd Winning the Race (published in 2006), attempted to identify the sources of Black underachievement. Since McWhorter frequently references his former books in Woke Racism, I will briefly summarize them here. In Losing the Race, McWhorter tried to identify the causes of inequalities between Blacks and Whites. He traces the source to three cults (the religion angle is not a new one for McWhorter)—victimhood, separatism, and anti-intellectualism. He feels these ideas have been turned into crutches that have prevented Black people from achieving their true potential after the victories of the Civil Rights movement. He castigates Black America for transforming victimhood from a problem to be solved into an identity akin to cult worship. He blames the Cult of Separatism for the belief that certain mainstream cultural traits like logical reasoning and timeliness are “White” and therefore not part of Black culture.
The biggest sin, in McWhorter’s mind, is that this separatism has led many Blacks to be infected by the “virus” of anti-intellectualism. He points to low SAT scores and subpar college performance, even on the part of many middle and upper class Blacks, as evidence of this infection. To reverse this trend, McWhorter believes that it is necessary to address Black culture, not White attitudes. His mantra is that “a person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.”
Where Losing the Race is largely anecdotal, McWhorter resorts to hard social science data to prove his point in Winning the Race. Despite the title, the tone is more somber, the data more compelling. Here, his goal is to trace the source of Black poverty, crime, and family breakdown. He rejects the commonly held assumptions (loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of middle class role models) to explain Black poverty and crime. Instead, McWhorter settles on welfare programs of the 1960s as the main culprit. He shows that a Black underclass developed in most American cities just at the time widespread welfare programs came into vogue.
McWhorter coins the term “Therapeutic Alienation” to explain why many Blacks continue to allege racism as the cause of their ills despite dramatic gains in White attitudes about racial equality since the 1960s. He believes this suspension of disbelief in the face of evidence to the contrary is necessary to help many Black individuals cope with a sense of inferiority (a cultural holdover from America’s more racist past).
Ultimately by writing these three books, McWhorter urges Black America to take partial responsibility for the disparities facing it and to work toward fixing them. In Woke Racism, he wants us to resist antiracist dogma rather than merely acquiesce to it. He delivers his message forcefully and in a compelling fashion. He effectively demonstrates that this is not simply some theoretical debate–people’s careers and reputations are at stake.
What I enjoyed most about Woke Racism is that McWhorter not only makes his point clearly and concisely but memorably as well. His phrasing is punchy and colorful. Because antiracist doctrine has led us astray on the issue of civil rights, he argues, “A new religion in the guise of world progress is not an advance; it is a detour.” Heavily critical of antiracists’ intolerance of dissent, McWhorter asserts that “for the Elect, barring heretics is not a decision. It is a duty—unquestioned, and as natural as breathing air.” With by far his best line, McWhorter at one point dubs the Elect as “medievals with lattes.”
Where I think the book falls short is in its proposed solution to the problem of racial inequality. McWhorter’s cure for the ills afflicting the Black Community?–eliminate the War on Drugs, teach all students to read by phonics, and end affirmative action programs in education. While I admire McWhorter’s passion and his reliance on reason to advance his arguments, his policy proscriptions seem too simplistic. Yes, these changes will help, but if McWhorter is indeed correct that Black cultural attitudes are the real issue, a wholesale cultural shift—one that embraces education, two-parent families, nonviolence, and self-reliance—will be required to remedy the problem. My sense is that other factors are also at play here as well like poverty, urban decay, the prevalence of inexperienced and ineffective teachers employed in inner city schools, and the proliferation of subtle forms of racial bias besides outright prejudice. All of these factors will need to be addressed to end racial inequality.
