Woke Racism
* Book: Woke Racism. How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. By John McWhorter. Penguin / Random House, 2021
URL = https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696856/woke-racism-by-john-mcwhorter/
Description
"An illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.
Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is “appropriation.” We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we’ll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labeled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion—and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.
In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of “white privilege” and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the “woke mob.” He shows how this religion that claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called “antiracism,” but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.
Fortunately for Black America, and for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, Black America."
Review
Gregg Enriques:
“Seven Elements that Make Third-Wave Antiracism a Religion
In his chapter titled, "The New Religion," McWhorter claims that the following seven elements make the Elect’s commitment to third-wave antiracism a new religion.
- The Elect have a superstition. McWhorter argues that for the Elect there are basic assertions that must not be challenged. For example, the Elect believe there is a force called structural racism that is the source of all the inequity and that everyone must always be oriented against that force. To question that is to be racist.
- The Elect have a clergy. McWhorter identifies Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibrahim X. Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo as the high priests of the movement.
- The Elect have original sin. White privilege is the Elect’s original sin. McWhorter characterizes this as follows, “The Elect are to ritually acknowledge that they possess white privilege, with an awareness that they can never be absolved from it.”
- The Elect are evangelical. “Key to being an Elect is a sense that there is always a flock of unconverted heathen,” writes McWhorter. Many academic institutions have now become home to reaching, preaching, and converting the young. McWhorter frames this as follows, “It is easy to see smugness in this vision and to wonder how so many smart people could fall so easily into being so insufferable. We need not see them this way. They are not smug. They are evangelists. They are normal, as are all religious people.
- The Elect are apocalyptic. “Elect scripture,” writes McWhorter, “stipulates a judgment day: the great day when America 'owns up to' or 'comes to terms with' racism and finally fixes it.” He goes on to argue that this is essentially impossible, but it nevertheless gives the Elect their purpose in reaching out to the heathen and preaching to convert.
- The Elect ban the heretic. The endless examples of cancel culture from the left make this point obvious. “The Elect consider it an imperative to not only critique those who disagree with their creed but to seek their punishment and elimination to whatever degree real-life conditions can accommodate.”
- The Elect supplant older religions. Here McWhorter gives several examples of how the Elect have started to blend in with some religious communities, especially those in Unitarianism. He wrote, “The pastor of New York City’s Church of St. Francis Xavier led vows addressing white privilege and racial justice, melding Catholicism and Electism" on the level of personal testimony in a fashion much more reminiscent of white fragility than Dorothy Day.”