emazur
07-20-2020, 04:42 PM
Worth clicking - you won't get stories like this from the mainstream media that likes to pretend black people like this don't exist. One of the libertarian individuals mentioned in this article was recently interviewed by Reason (https://reason.com/video/kmele-foster-on-why-he-opposes-cancel-culture-and-the-anti-capitalist-side-of-black-lives-matter/)
https://forward.com/opinion/451099/a-new-intelligentsia-is-pushing-back-against-wokeness/
A few excerpts:
A small group of Black intellectuals are leading a counter-culture against the newly hegemonic wokeness.
They are public intellectuals like John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University; Thomas Chatterton Williams, a memoirist and contributor to The New York Times Magazine; Kmele Foster, cofounder of Freethink and host of The Fifth Column Podcast; and Chloe Valdary, founder of a startup called Theory of Enchantment. Also frequently opining against today’s new norms are Glenn Loury, professor of economics at Brown, and Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal (Hughes and Loury did not respond to interview requests). Each is contributing to a powerful counternarrative and as a result, their Twitter followers and podcast downloads are exploding. In being anti-woke and having experienced being Black in America (though not all identify as “Black”), these public intellectuals scramble the racial lines of today’s debate, speaking up for many who are too afraid to voice their opinions – and facing down the mob on their behalf.
“If I get canceled,” Williams told me recently, “I’ll get canceled by a white anti-racist. I really believe that.”
...
It would be wrong to overstate the similarities between these thinkers. They are by no means a coherent group, and disagree about many, if not most, topics. Foster is an anarcho-libertarian. Williams has left-wing politics, and McWhorter identifies as a liberal
...
What unites them into an emerging and increasingly influential intelligentsia is their rejection of the racial essentialism they view as ascendant in our current moment – the idea that one must prioritize race over everything else to combat racism.
“Racial essentialism is very reductive and actually oppressive,” Valdary told me. “Ironically, it reduces us as individuals to our immutable characteristics, which is precisely what we were supposed to be fighting against.”
...
But the racial lines of the letter and counter-letter are not quite so clear cut. Foster, McWhorter, Hughes, and Valdary all signed the Harper’s letter. And Williams spearheaded it.
...
He brings a similar nuanced approach to bear on our current moment. “Certainly, we have a police-brutality problem and certainly there’s racism and certainly that impacts Blacks disproportionately, but we also have a police-brutality problem that kills enormous amounts of whites, Native Americans and Latinos,” he told me. “Oftentimes, we get into this confused conversation where we make class differences racial differences. We don’t really take into account all the very different kind of textures in Black life that exist now.” Many Black people have no contact with the criminal justice system, Williams said. Meanwhile, white people killed by the police get very little attention. Like others I interviewed for this piece, Williams mentioned Tony Timpa, a white man who died in Dallas while handcuffed and pinned to the ground; police officers joked over his dying body for 13 minutes.
Overplaying the racial element not only hinders reforms that would work, Williams argued; it also fuels a dangerous cultural overreach. “I’m 100% supportive of what the Movement for Black Lives has done to raise awareness about police violence and I hope it gets to some real reforms,” he told me. “But the excesses are really worth dwelling on.”
Those excesses include people losing jobs and a chilling of debate in their wake. “The worst thing is that you don’t even allow yourself to think or say things,” he said. “Not many people have to be punished for the self-regulation to take effect. I see that happening already.” His inbox is full of letters from people who are afraid to voice their opinions.
...
Foster, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Freethink, often makes powerful disquisitions on the show from his anarcho-libertarian point of view that are moving even if you don’t agree with him. On a recent episode, he argued that it was not only Black Americans who were the victims of slavery; had it not existed, he argued, the entire country would be more prosperous.
“Think of all the brilliant Africans who were imported to this country by force and pressed into service, and their progeny, which must have included a couple of Einsteins, who were never allowed to achieve anything, who were robbed of opportunity,” he said. “The injury is all of ours. It is collective. It belongs to the country.”
...
And yet, it’s increasingly a prevalent one, portrayed in books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” which has been at the top of The New York Times bestseller list for a month. McWhorter wrote a scathing piece about the book in The Atlantic recently: “Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome. Or simply dehumanized us.” McWhorter has also decried the increasingly hostile environment in which people are defrocked for dissenting viewpoints. He’s gotten over 100 emails from people, including many academics, who are afraid to speak their minds for fear of losing their jobs, and he’s a big critic of cancel culture.
...
The use of the word “heretic” is intentional. McWhorter was among the first to identify what he sees as a religious component to anti-racism. Back in 2015, he wrote an article about anti-racism as “our flawed new religion,” and he is currently working on a book about it.
https://forward.com/opinion/451099/a-new-intelligentsia-is-pushing-back-against-wokeness/
A few excerpts:
A small group of Black intellectuals are leading a counter-culture against the newly hegemonic wokeness.
They are public intellectuals like John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University; Thomas Chatterton Williams, a memoirist and contributor to The New York Times Magazine; Kmele Foster, cofounder of Freethink and host of The Fifth Column Podcast; and Chloe Valdary, founder of a startup called Theory of Enchantment. Also frequently opining against today’s new norms are Glenn Loury, professor of economics at Brown, and Coleman Hughes, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal (Hughes and Loury did not respond to interview requests). Each is contributing to a powerful counternarrative and as a result, their Twitter followers and podcast downloads are exploding. In being anti-woke and having experienced being Black in America (though not all identify as “Black”), these public intellectuals scramble the racial lines of today’s debate, speaking up for many who are too afraid to voice their opinions – and facing down the mob on their behalf.
“If I get canceled,” Williams told me recently, “I’ll get canceled by a white anti-racist. I really believe that.”
...
It would be wrong to overstate the similarities between these thinkers. They are by no means a coherent group, and disagree about many, if not most, topics. Foster is an anarcho-libertarian. Williams has left-wing politics, and McWhorter identifies as a liberal
...
What unites them into an emerging and increasingly influential intelligentsia is their rejection of the racial essentialism they view as ascendant in our current moment – the idea that one must prioritize race over everything else to combat racism.
“Racial essentialism is very reductive and actually oppressive,” Valdary told me. “Ironically, it reduces us as individuals to our immutable characteristics, which is precisely what we were supposed to be fighting against.”
...
But the racial lines of the letter and counter-letter are not quite so clear cut. Foster, McWhorter, Hughes, and Valdary all signed the Harper’s letter. And Williams spearheaded it.
...
He brings a similar nuanced approach to bear on our current moment. “Certainly, we have a police-brutality problem and certainly there’s racism and certainly that impacts Blacks disproportionately, but we also have a police-brutality problem that kills enormous amounts of whites, Native Americans and Latinos,” he told me. “Oftentimes, we get into this confused conversation where we make class differences racial differences. We don’t really take into account all the very different kind of textures in Black life that exist now.” Many Black people have no contact with the criminal justice system, Williams said. Meanwhile, white people killed by the police get very little attention. Like others I interviewed for this piece, Williams mentioned Tony Timpa, a white man who died in Dallas while handcuffed and pinned to the ground; police officers joked over his dying body for 13 minutes.
Overplaying the racial element not only hinders reforms that would work, Williams argued; it also fuels a dangerous cultural overreach. “I’m 100% supportive of what the Movement for Black Lives has done to raise awareness about police violence and I hope it gets to some real reforms,” he told me. “But the excesses are really worth dwelling on.”
Those excesses include people losing jobs and a chilling of debate in their wake. “The worst thing is that you don’t even allow yourself to think or say things,” he said. “Not many people have to be punished for the self-regulation to take effect. I see that happening already.” His inbox is full of letters from people who are afraid to voice their opinions.
...
Foster, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Freethink, often makes powerful disquisitions on the show from his anarcho-libertarian point of view that are moving even if you don’t agree with him. On a recent episode, he argued that it was not only Black Americans who were the victims of slavery; had it not existed, he argued, the entire country would be more prosperous.
“Think of all the brilliant Africans who were imported to this country by force and pressed into service, and their progeny, which must have included a couple of Einsteins, who were never allowed to achieve anything, who were robbed of opportunity,” he said. “The injury is all of ours. It is collective. It belongs to the country.”
...
And yet, it’s increasingly a prevalent one, portrayed in books like Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” which has been at the top of The New York Times bestseller list for a month. McWhorter wrote a scathing piece about the book in The Atlantic recently: “Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome. Or simply dehumanized us.” McWhorter has also decried the increasingly hostile environment in which people are defrocked for dissenting viewpoints. He’s gotten over 100 emails from people, including many academics, who are afraid to speak their minds for fear of losing their jobs, and he’s a big critic of cancel culture.
...
The use of the word “heretic” is intentional. McWhorter was among the first to identify what he sees as a religious component to anti-racism. Back in 2015, he wrote an article about anti-racism as “our flawed new religion,” and he is currently working on a book about it.