THE A-FRAME:

McWhorter... argues that the cultural left, along with major institutions and companies, have gone too far in embracing "anti-racist" ideas.

Much of it relates to the way two prominent writers about race have influenced public opinion about racism. Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility have both landed on bestseller lists since last summer, after widespread protests erupted over George Floyd's killing. [...]

Why is it that you assert that people who are pushing a particular kind of anti-racism are practicing something like a religion?

Part of many religions is that at a certain point, you're supposed to suspend disbelief. At a certain point, you're supposed to stop using logic and you're just supposed to, for example, believe. You're just supposed to have faith. That is the way this new anti-racism goes in many cases. ...

This is a religion where instead of it being about your faith in Jesus, it's about showing that you know that racism exists above all else, including basic compassion. That's religious.

And then also, the way we talk about white privilege is eerily consonant with the way one talks about original sin. You have it from the beginning, it's a stain that you'll never get rid of. You're supposed to always think about it. It's there regardless of the condition of your life, and you're going to die with it. So white privilege becomes the original sin that you're supposed to live in a kind of atonement for.

Would you agree with your critics that racism, systemic racism is real and present now?

Yes. It's funny, I'm grappling with this idea that the response to me is to say "he doesn't know systemic racism exists." I think part of it is that that's a very clumsy term. Yes, I know that those inequities exist. I think that those inequities must be battled. The issue is, what do you do to battle them? And I say, telling people not to be racist or thinking of those inequities as some abstract version of bigotry doesn't help people who need help.

Would you also argue to lower the penalty for racist speech? That essentially people should be a little more accepting of unacceptable language by other people and just be willing to debate them rather than push them off the stage.

I think that there's an extent to which any society is going to have taboos, and that taboos can be useful. But I also think that we are tending to take that sort of thing a little too far in the name of the idea that our job is to signal that we know racism exists.

And so, yeah, I kind of like the way it was about 20, maybe 15 years ago. But we've gotten to the point that we're so focused on what people say and how they say it that we're paying more attention to that than to the perhaps less glamorous work of getting out on the ground and trying to change society.

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