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Key insights from
Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has
Betrayed Black America
By
John McWhorter
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What you’ll learn
Linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter
argues that while the antiracist movement is often viewed as a political
phenomenon, it is better characterized as a religion. It scratches all the
itches that religions conventionally deliver: hallowed tenets to be taken
on faith, a path to atonement, doctrines of original sin, and visions of a
coming judgment. McWhorter argues that this antiracist orthodoxy is also
evangelical and eager to sniff out heretics in some corners of the
religious fold. According to McWhorter, this is harmful to society,
including the black community that the religion yearns to help.
Read on for key insights from Woke Racism.
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1. Third Wave
antiracists have formed a religious, enlightened “Elect,” and their vision
and agenda are not to be questioned.
There are arguably three waves of antiracism that roughly
mirror early feminist waves. The First Wave of antiracism took the institution
of slavery to task and fought against segregation. The Second Wave (1970s
and 1980s) pushed back against persistent racist views that prevented
American society from seeing blacks as fully equal to whites. Third Wave
antiracism has gained prominence since the 2010s, promoting the idea that
society is racist to the core, that racism is in the air we breathe, and
that those who fail to actively work toward eliminating institutions’
default “whiteness” are racist themselves. Those who are inadequately aware
of how “existing while white” perpetuates the system are vulnerable to
scorn and condescension.
This set of social and cultural conditions put most
Americans (even many who are left of center) in the uncomfortable position
of navigating the real world according to antiracism’s set of fierce and
abstract tenets. It is hard to say anything in public without wondering
which ill-chosen word or phrase will provoke the more zealous antiracists.
The label “racist” now carries the same emotional weight and social stigma
as “pedophile” does. It’s a one-way ticket to society’s margins.
“Social justice warriors” is too pejorative a term to use
for antiracists. Resorting to labels that carry dismissive undertones only
encourages divisiveness in a society already full of it. The term “the
Elect” better captures the religious nature of antiracism and the sense of
holy purpose and authority held by those under its sway. Moreover, a very
diverse group of people make up the antiracist Elect, and most of them are
good, ordinary people leading ordinary lives.
There are plenty of everyday people who ascribe to tenets of
the Elect without a hunger to eviscerate those outside the fold. But these
people share a holy cause with the violent and outspoken members of the
Elect. The good, ordinary woke folk may wince at their counterparts’
violence and defamation, but they won’t stand in the way of it. They might
consider the extreme tactics unfortunate, but fall back on the sentiment
that you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. The messy means lead
to enlightened ends. And of course, to begin objecting to these messy means
is grounds for excommunication. So is objecting to racism without the
requisite level of zeal, or in a way that reveals some undercurrent of
complicity.
Third Wave antiracism is so chillingly influential that it
has made actors out of us, turning politics into a perfunctory performance
meant to keep us from becoming pariahs. In some ways, Third Wave antiracism
is much like a belated rehash for those who wish they had been alive for
the 1960s Counterculture. But more than a half century removed from that
era, the methods and rhetoric seem contrived.
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2. Third Wave
antiracism has all the hallmarks of a religion, from clergy and apocalyptic
vision, to a doctrine of original sin.
It is facile to dismiss the antiracist Elect as “crazy.”
There is a structure and meaning behind their beliefs, and it is not
hyperbolic to say the Elect are part of a new religious movement. This is
not an attempt to dismiss the movement, but to characterize it as accurately
as possible. From an anthropological perspective, religion is a perfect
descriptor.
The Elect have
superstition. They are willing to take things on faith in the absence of
empirical evidence or logically coherent explanations. The common response
to the question of why the Bible is so full of contradictions is just to
have faith that it all holds together somehow. It would be impertinent to
push the matter further. In the same way, it is improper for the skeptic
outside the fold or the doubter within it to ask why the far more prevalent
black-on-black killings are not discussed at all, but white-cop-on-black
killings are rushed to the fore of public scrutiny and outcry. Press this
too far, and the response is annoyance and anger.
The Elect have clergy.
When journalist Ta-Nehesi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations” came
out, people were spellbound—even though the essay added nothing novel to
the argument for reparations. The aesthetic quality of the piece had
critics and the public alike in tears. The beauty and an ineffable stirring
quality of the essay moved people more than the argument did. “The Case for
Reparations” functioned and was embraced like a sermon from a fiery
preacher or prophet. The intelligentsia tend to embrace thinkers like
Coates for their ability to wordsmith and pluck heartstrings. They are de
facto priests and pastors, here less to inform than to comfort and exhort.
The Elect have a
doctrine of original sin. The simplest way to
sum up their doctrine is “white privilege.” It is true that being white in
the United States does carry with it many privileges. You are not as
vulnerable to stereotypes as other groups. People in places of authority
look like you. You are the kind of person that people from other parts of
the world think of when they think “American.” The doctrine of original
sin, according to the Elect, cannot just be a passing observation or
belief. It requires white people to confess their white privilege, to live
in constant awareness of it, and to acknowledge there is no chance for
absolution. Constant awareness of one’s social sinfulness is the best one
can do.
The faith of the Elect
is evangelical. Not content to practice their religion and tolerate
differences, the Elect insist on convincing others to convert to it. The
Elect view themselves as commissioned to spread the Good News of
Antiracism, and that this is the only path to the perfect world. That
perfect world is impossible without persuading those “out there.”
The Elect’s faith is
also apocalyptic. The Elect believe a moment of
reckoning awaits the society unwilling to repent of its whiteness. White
America is supposed to “come to terms” with its corruption and abuse on
judgment day.
The Elect also punish
heretics. Christians use the language of “blasphemous;” the Elect
simply refer to infractions as “problematic.'' Antiracists have an
orthodoxy to carefully observe, and there are consequences for those who
fail to toe the line. What the media began calling “cancel culture” in 2019
exemplifies the impulse of the Elect to excommunicate. We are back to
burning witches, even if it’s the cyber equivalent that ends careers and social
lives, rather than snuffing out life entirely.
The Elect are part of a
religious faith. Eric Hoffer astutely observed that a religion doesn’t need
a God—just a devil. For the antiracist Elect, “whiteness” and “racism”
constitute the Satanic presence that haunts and corrupts society. Like any
religion, antiracism does not tolerate Satan, but fights him.
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3. The religion of
antiracism is not helping black people.
Someone could see how the antiracist Elect fit the
anthropological profile of religious people and still say, “So what? They
are fighting something pernicious, namely racism. Shouldn’t we all be
involved in that?”
The question then becomes “What fruit is this new religion
bearing for the very demographic the Elect say they want to help? What have
been the outcomes for real black people on the ground?” Let’s see what the
efforts to “dismantle racist structures” have led to.
There are numerous superstitions that Elect believers have
to look away from in order to hold on to their faith and avoid lapses into
doubt:
The Elect have to ignore black students getting beaten up by
other black students in schools. A 2014 letter from the US Department of
Education corroborated the conclusion that black boys are disciplined to a
much greater extent than boys of other races, and this is due to racism.
Other high-ranking groups have reported similar findings. But the
uncomfortable truth is that black boys simply tend to commit more violent
acts than other students. Because many people attribute the higher numbers of
black students in public schools being disciplined to prejudice, more and
more, school violence is going unreported. Teachers don’t want to be
accused of being bigots. And since it’s disproportionately black students
fighting other black students, black students are being disproportionately
harmed.
Another grievance that the Elect have to overlook is the way
black university students disproportionately flunk when they are catapulted
via affirmative action and other inflated metrics into top schools. These
are institutions where professors assume a level of familiarity with
abstract ideas (or at least the skill of faking it) and move through their
courses at a fast pace and with great rigor. Imagine growing up in a home
without any books, and a much more practical body of knowledge to navigate
the day-to-day, then jumping into college courses like these. Students
unaccustomed to the rigors of a top tier school end up leaving majors and
their dreams of becoming lawyers and scientists. Majorities of such students
are black and Latino. As a result of their struggles and academic failures,
they feel demoralized. They might have flourished if they had attended a
good-not-great school, and graduated with some optimism. Instead, some
don’t graduate at all. Studies that point out the “mismatch” in these
students’ pre-college lives are pilloried as racist, but the basic and
tragic observations still stand.
Behavior in school and academic struggles are just a few
examples of situations in which the Elect have to look the other way,
refrain from questioning the efficacy of woke attempts to dismantle racist
structures, and indignantly decry those with the temerity to question the
efforts. There are many other examples of such scenarios, like not
questioning the practice of renouncing historical figures whose actions
were “normal” in their time; insistence on placing “non-whiteness” at the
heart of the black identity; the conviction that unequal outcomes
necessarily indicate unequal opportunity; and the unwavering belief that
America “hushes up slavery.”
These are all tenets of the Elect’s faith that
go unquestioned, even if they are demonstrably destructive and
unhelpful to blacks.
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4. There are three
practical, achievable adjustments that antiracists should back if they
really want to see black communities thrive.
The antiracist Elect are not a political group, but better
categorized as a religious group. Although fighting racism is noble, their
efforts have been shown to make life harder for blacks—not easier. What will
actually help black people move forward, if the Elect’s religion will
not?
Racism is an incredibly complex social phenomenon. It’s been
around a long time and is tied to culture, history, and ideas that did not
pop into our social political milieu ex nihilo. Thus, it is naïve
to set ending racism as our goal. That goal is like the political process a
fifth grader details in an essay about a perfect world—a lovely idea that
misses the complexity of social and political institutions. A better,
grounded alternative that is actually attainable and would bring the most
benefit for the black community is a three-pronged effort:
1. Stop the war on drugs. It has failed to quash
the supply of or demand for the wicked substances. The war is not helping
blacks, and far from shutting down the illicit market, the war on drugs is
allowing it to flourish. It is very understandable that underprivileged
young black men would get involved in drug trafficking after dropping or
flunking out of failing schools that did not prepare them for the future.
Getting into the business world with strange customs and with white people
who are even stranger and unfamiliar is a daunting prospect. Falling back
on what is more familiar can seem a much safer bet—even if familiar happens
to be dangerous and illegal. Legalizing and regulating drugs would allow
black men who might default to drug dealing would be compelled to seek
employment in the formal economy. Incarceration rates would drop, too, and
these men would have a better shot at progressing in life.
2. Teach kids to read and write properly. There are
two theories of reading pedagogy: focusing on phonics or what is called the
“whole word method.” Phonics teaches kids to read by introducing them to
different sounds, whereas the whole word method breaks words into chunks
and has children guess based on context and first letter. The axiom
underpinning the whole word method is that English is just too vast an
etymological hodgepodge for children to learn to read and write based on
phonics. This method and assumption, however, contradicts the
research-based conclusion that has been clarion since the 1960s: Phonics is
the far more effective way to teach poor children to read. When schools
switch back to phonics, black student test scores rise. Generations of
black children have been deprived of quality education in reading in part
because of innovative but ineffective methods. Antiracists should be
advocating for phonics in their local school districts.
3. Make quality vocational training just as accessible
as university education. We have to decouple four-year college and
success because they do not necessarily go together, and they are not the
only winning combination. As it is, university degrees are not only
challenging but increasingly cost-prohibitive. Instead of saddling young
people with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt and
providing fewer opportunities for post-graduate employment, quality
vocational training programs would be a helpful, less costly alternative.
Additionally, vocational training enables graduates to earn a stable
living, far beyond what the generation before them would have made. There
is a growing return to working class means of employment—not just for the
poor, but even for those among the middle-class and the wealthy. We have
been too quick to dismiss as undignified the work of plumbers,
electricians, and mechanics, but if you ever ask these technicians, they do
not see their work or themselves that way.
For antiracists looking to bring about demonstrable good for
blacks, these are efforts worth getting behind. They are practical,
achievable, and will empower blacks more than a grand, abstract vision so
all-consuming that we can’t make strides at all. As with so many other
areas of life, less is more.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Woke
Racism here. And since we get a commission on
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