John McWhorter on the 'Religion' of Antiracism

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now Columbia University linguistics professor and New York Times columnist John McWhorter, with his new book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Maybe you saw his related column in the Times this week called Wokeness Is Over Simplifying the American Creed. Now, maybe these aren't titles you'd expect from a New York Times columnist and Columbia University professor, a Black American himself, who for a previous book was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for outstanding work of nonfiction but it's the book John McWhorter has written.

John was last here recently, as many of you will remember with his linguistics professor hat on talking about words whose meanings have changed over time, this will be very different. John, thanks for coming on. As always, welcome back to WNYC.

John McWhorter: Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian: You're a professional linguist so you obviously know what you mean by the words you choose. Your book was called Woke Racism, what's your definition of woke? What's your definition of racism?

John: Well, let's try this Brian. We live in New York City and the fashion in the educational establishment in New York City, is to get rid of standardized tests, get rid of gifted programs. The idea being that for socio-historical reasons, Black kids in particular tend not to do as well on standardized tests as other kids. 50 years ago, the idea would have been how do we get the kids better on the test? That would have been the first thing that somebody who was a civil rights leader back then would have thought of. Here in the city, it would have been, say, Adam Clayton Powell, anybody, that would have been it. How do we make it so that in our community, the kids do better on the test?

Today, the idea among a certain kind of woke and unintentionally racist white person, such as Bill de Blasio, is to say, No, the tests are racist because Black kids don't do well on them and you don't specify how you just say that they are because of the outcome because you read a book by Ibram Kendi, and you say, "Let's not have the tests at all." Now, of course, what everybody is quietly thinking is, "Well, it looks like Black kids just aren't as smart and if Black kids aren't as smart, then it means Black people aren't as smart." You don't talk about it but to say, "If the test gives Black kids problems, we're going to pull it away, because it makes us feel good to say that it is a racist."

That's racist because really, we should be giving the Black kids practice on taking tests like that because they're only going to encounter more of them. The general idea that it's racist to subject a Black person to a test of abstract cognitive skill is one of the most bigoted primitive things I've ever heard in my lifetime and sounds like something coming from the old time segregated south and yet someone like Bill de Blasio thinks that he's doing the right thing. This is woke racism. Am I saying he's a racist? Of course, not for the rather obvious reason of who he's married to, et cetera. It's unintentional, but it's anti-Black. My book is about that sort of thing.

Brian: Wow, I didn't expect you to go to G&T right away, I didn't expect you to go to Bill de Blasio as an individual. I'll ask you at least one follow up question on that before we get to other aspects. If the test is supposed to measure something called giftedness, which sounds like an inherent quality and such a smaller percentage of Black kids pass that threshold than white kids, unless you assume the actually racist assumption that Black kids are genetically less gifted than white kids percentage wise, then there must be something wrong with what the test is measuring, isn't there?

John: No. Obviously, what the test is measuring is something we call intelligence, or G. What about the idea that, "Give your kids a little practice," and yes, your four-year old, there is nothing antithetical about giving four-year olds practice and a little something. If you've seen those gifted tests, they're just a little something. Why not the practice, if that sort of thing for cultural reasons, is less familiar and congenial to a lot of Black kids than, for example, to a middle class white kid because obviously, it's not about intelligence, it's about something else.

No, the idea that you take the test away because the kids are Black, and they don't do as well on it means that you're essentially saying Black kids aren't as bright so we're just going to change the scenery. No, I won't accept it and I know what all of us are thinking. We just don't want to say it. Well, I'll say it, I'm Black. It makes it look like Black people are dumb. I don't like it. That is not in the book, but it would be if this had happened when I was writing the book. It's racist.

Brian: All right, we'll put that in a bubble for the moment. Maybe bring it up in our Ask The Mayor segment tomorrow, who knows?

John: I hope you do.

Brian: I'll keep going on the words your subtitle is How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. You actually say anti-racism is a religion, like Pentecostalism is a religion. Really?

John: Yes, it is. What I mean by that partly is that a component of many religions is that you have to suspend disbelief to an extent. There's a point at which, for example, in say, Pentecostal somewhere, you have to just have faith. You're not supposed to ask too many questions, that's part of it, part of the glory of religion is that it goes beyond strict rationality but that's also true with this new religion that I call the elect, where there are things that you're not supposed to ask too many questions about, such as you say that the test is racist.

Of course, everyone's thinking, "Doesn't that mean that Black people aren't as bright?" But you're not supposed to ask and when I say this, I'm going to get a whole lot of hate mail for saying the wrong thing, but it's quite obvious that that's what it implies. You're just not supposed to talk about it because instead of having faith, what it's about is you're supposed to show that you know that racism exists. You're supposed to show that you know that there are disparities based on race, you show that to one another, and Black people are often part of this religion as well.

The thing is just showing that you know that often leaves people in a ditch, such as depriving Black children of the ability to wrap their heads around something like a standardized test, or a test of intelligence. I'm using this one example because I want people to realize what a horror that is. Here in New York City, it's something that we all have recently been thinking about, it's racism.

Brian: On the notion of religion, wokeness being a religion, you compare the notion of white privilege to the notion of original sin in Christianity, but I would ask original sin as a kind of metaphysical concept. Isn't white privilege a reality on the grounds that so many white people-- it's reality on the ground is what I meant to say, I looked at my own note wrong there. Isn't white privilege of reality on the ground that so many white people can't see until it's pointed out to them?

John: Oh, yes. White privilege is real. The concept itself is something that I am glad that America has been taught to think about. Yes, it's real but the question is, what do you do with it? What do you do about it? Once a person sits and realizes that they've got this white privilege, how do you use that realization to help Black people who need help? There's a major disconnect between the theological way that white people are encouraged to think about that, which is, it's the stain that never goes away, you're supposed to endlessly cogitate about it, you're going to die with it, no matter what you do, no matter how miserable your life as a white person might be, you still have it.

The parallels with original sin are absolutely uncanny, but the thing is, once you realize that you've got this white privilege it is an important concept, what do you do with it? I say that what you do with it is not, for example, to say tests of abstract intelligence are racist, and therefore we won't do it to Black kids. That's not what you do with realizing that you have white privilege.

Brian: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for a Columbia University linguistics professor and New York Times columnist John McWhorter, on these ideas from his book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Listeners of any background may call. Black listeners Professor McWhorter is addressing this argument in part to you arguing you've been betrayed by a certain rising brand of racial politics as he sees it, how are you hearing this? Anything you would say or ask John McWhorter? Anyone? 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692.

John: Brian, I want to interject here that Woke Racism is not a book about Black people needing to pull up their bootstraps, et cetera. That is not this kind of book even though I know I have a reputation for being somebody who says things like that.

Brian: You wrote that book once upon a time.

John: Actually, I didn't, but I know people will always think so, but this is a book that is protecting Black people. This is a pro-Black book. I am looking at the way many people are being taught to think about Black people and I am truly alarmed at how much a lot of it sounds like something that Strom Thurmond would have been comfortable with. Just because you eat brie and you subscribe to The Atlantic doesn't mean that you're not being as racist as those people even if you don't know it. I really want people to know this book is written as a service to people of my race. It is not a right wing book. It's not a conservative book. It has nothing to do with Fox News, has nothing to do with Trump. It's a book written out of concern for people of my skin color.

Brian: I was going to ask you about how close it seems to resemble the language of Trump and others like him. Let me read you a few news headlines and leads that show whose views and political agenda it seems like you're in sync with or could seem to people like. Last summer during the political conventions and the presidential campaigns, a Times analysis noted this difference. Joe Biden acknowledged the importance, "of rooting out our systemic racism".

During his acceptance speech the message was quite different as the Republican convention got underway, the article says and it quotes Nikki Haley, who said America is not a racist country and portrayed Democrats as unpatriotic for harping on the prevalence of discrimination in American life. The article went on to say nor did anyone mention say the country's gaping racial wealth gap or the disproportionate impact of pollution on Black communities.

Then it says moments after Ms. Haley's address Donald Trump Jr took her argument a step further. The other party is attacking the very principles on which the nation was founded. That was last summer. More recently we have this a Times headline on June 3rd, Pence calls Systemic Racism a Left-Wing Myth and from Politico on July 28th, America is not Racist Country Becomes a GOP 2024 Mantra. I guess my question is and in light of your last answer, how do you feel about saying the same things as Trump and Pence whose convention didn't even mention the racial wealth gap or the disparate effects of pollution?

John: That's a good question, Brian. I have to say and I mean absolutely no disrespect, you are a giant, you are a Titan, but this idea that the measure of a person who talks about race is "whether or not they know systemic racism exists" is and with all due respect, I think it's a little bit simplistic and it becomes totemic. I don't deny that there are disparities in this country and a great many of them that are based on race. Those are very real things. Woke Racism, this book is not about saying there's no such thing as systemic racism.

The issue is not whether I know what it is, it's what we do about it. If you see one of those disparities, if the answer is get rid of the racism then what that often leads to is, for example, taking away standardized tests because Black kids happen not to be as good at them and there's a quiet assumption that nothing would make them as good at them. That's the problem. Systemic racism, yes, not as many Black kids as we would like test into gifted programs and so there aren't as many Black kids in them, but to say, "Okay, that's racism so just blow the whole thing up."

Frankly and I'm not saying this is you, but that is virtue signaling rather than facing a problem. For example, every time summer comes, you hear about underserved Black boys in marginal communities killing each other in the hundreds. You see the headlines it's usually in the back of the paper every weekend, that happens. There are not equivalent numbers of white boys killing one another. There's a disparity there. What do you do about it? Well, if you say the reason they're doing that is racism that doesn't really help any of their mothers. What do you do about that?

Why don't you pay as much attention, for example, to that as you pay to say what Darren Wilsons and the Michael Slegers and the Derek Chauvin's do? I worry about this kind of thing to just look at systemic racism and say, "It's racism. We must get rid of the racism." It doesn't work because especially often what created something was racism in the past. No doubt and you can find it and the past was often as recently as the 70s, but it isn't racism now.

There is racism without racists as one book had it and we like to pretend that that isn't true because we want to show one another that we know what racism is, but that's only the beginning. I'm really interested in changing things, but we can't do it if we go with mantras like, "When I see disparities I see racism." It's too simplistic. That's not how social history has ever worked even for the descendants of slaves in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Do you see what I mean?

Brian: I hear your argument and let's take a phone call. Charles in Manhattan you are on WNYC with Columbia University linguist and New York Times columnist John McWhorter with his new book Woke Racism. Charles, you on the air. Hi.

Charles: Hi, can you hear me, Brian?

Brian: Yes, I hear you.

Charles: Thank you so much. I have another question before I get to the one that I said when I spoke to one of your colleagues. There's that test is it been denied to everyone not just Blacks?

John: Yes. The idea is let's pretend that those tests don't exist. Get rid of them.

Charles: It is deemed not given to everybody not just Blacks themselves?

John: Right.

Charles: How could you call that racism? And I'm actually American. My mother [inaudible 00:15:09] so I'm ready for you. Answer me.

John: Are you going to let me talk or should I just let you go on?

Brian: John, go ahead.

John: If you take away the test saying that Black kids weren't as good at it and so we're just going to get rid of it, then instead of saying, "Let's see if we can make the Black kids better at the test, you just get rid of it." It implies that Black kids aren't as smart. That to me is racist because Black kids are as smart. Why not try harder? Why not make sure that Black kids do better at it by giving them some practice? The reason that Black kids aren't as good at those tests is because of cultural conditions that are fashioned by racism in the past, but that doesn't mean that you get rid of the test now.

Charles: You just said that it was taken away from everyone not just Black kids. Everybody matters. The other thing that I wanted to say-- can I speak now?

Brian: Go ahead, Charles. Finish your thought.

Charles: Thank you. The way I got it in listening to you, you use white people as scapegoats which I think is a negative thing. I should say Caucasian people. You've got to stand up to the plate. If anything that you do, you stand up to the plate and I don't see you doing that. Brian, that's all I wanted to say. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian: Thank you very much. Anything else you want to say in response to Charles or should I move on?

John: I don't know what this standing up to the plate means so I can't answer. We should move on.

Brian: Rachel in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Rachel.

Rachel: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I have great great admiration for your guests today. I don't disagree with him. I'm much more interested in the recommendations he would make to change the situation because in the meantime, Harvard will be populated by only Asians and so will the elite high schools in New York City.

John: Frankly what we need to understand is that these standardized tests, one, can take practice, and two, that in many communities there is free preparation, free practice available. That's been true here in New York City for a long time. It's easy not to know it. The idea is to get the word out in the community that those preparation services are available. It has to become a cultural meme that this test is coming, it's not a natural way of thinking but you have to learn how to wangle that test in order to get into a great school. Among some people, that is more of a meme than among others. The solution is to get the word out in the community not to just get rid of the test.

That's the idea. We have to go back to what liberal we'll start of say 50 years ago. How can we do what everybody else is doing? Not what everybody else is doing is arbitrary and it's racist to expect us to do it. I just don't believe in that latter philosophy although I know that many people see it as ahead of the curve as a new way of looking at things. I would like to see them make their case for that better. That's what this book is about.

Brian: Rachel, thank you. I didn't think this was going to wind up focusing so much on G&T and the standardized tests for four-year-olds, but we have a tutor for standardized tests calling in because they've had this conversation is going. Chris in Canaan, Connecticut. You're on WNYC with John McWhorter. Hi.

Chris: Hi, Brian. I tutor the FHSAT in addition to other standardized tests. I charge a lot of money for it. John seems to be suggesting that we should just raise the profile of free programs for kids to take the test. Studying for the FHSAT for just one example takes hours and hours thousands of dollars for lots of kids for families that can't afford that, the public options of doing it is not going to cut it, and just raising the profile of those programs is not going to be the thing that gets the job done.

John: I don't understand why if we're talking about general public policy, if we're talking about anti-racism, it seems to me maybe I have too much imagination or maybe too little. It seems to me that the idea would be to very much raise the profile of preparation programs like that and to make them free. I assume that they don't all take literally thousands of hours although I understand the point here, but the idea would be, how do we make it so that Black kids can be better at those tests? I'm just being a civil rights leader sipping a martini in 1963.

That is what they would have said and I'm not sure that we've learned something beyond what they knew, it's just that there's a new fashion to suppose that mainstream standards are arbitrary and narrow and white and don't really measure anything important. When it comes to those tests and abstract cognitive intelligence, if they don't measure anything important, I'd like to talk about that after we make sure that Black people show that they can stand up just like everybody else can because I know that we can.

Chris: I think that they're not a holistic measure of what kids' abilities are. The only way to get into a specialized high school being the standardized high school aptitude test or admissions test is not fair because it discounts all of the other things that make kids great and make them smart and show their ability.

John: This is a sincere question. What are the other things and how would they submit themselves to measurement when you've got a great many applicants?

Chris: Well, how about their grades or recommendations from their teachers or extracurricular activities. The sorts of things that every college looks at, that every other specialized school system around the country looks at. New York City is the only public school high school system where the only way to get into the specialized schools is through a single test. That's the only way to get into those schools.

John: Okay. Let me break bread with you here. Should the test be eliminated completely?

Participant: No, I don't think so.

John: Okay. So that's--

Participant: It needs to be one measure of a more holistic approach. I do take your point that access to preparation for the test should be widely expanded. People should not have to be paying me $150 an hour to tutor their kids for 20 hours to get ready for the test.

John: That is definitely true. I hear you about holistic, but I just worry because once you say holistic, you end up getting into certain areas that create, for example, the lawsuits we're seeing now, which is easy to analyze. These lawsuits are easy to analyze as well. They're just racism. Once again, that's over simplified. The people who are behind these lawsuits to a large extent are on to something that a reasonable person can understand.

Yes, if it's only the test, it's a little bit 1875, sure. To just get rid of the test completely to me is equally 1875. What I see in that is, "These kids just can't do it anyway. They're not going to be able to do it so let's just get rid of the tests. They can't do it." That's what I hear but I hear what you're saying.

Brian: I think we came to a little bit of common ground on that phone call. Chris, thank you very much. John, I want to get back to one linguistic thing because it's so prominent in the news and the public conversation these days from the book then we'll try to get at least one more call in. You also criticized the word anti-racist being used frequently these days. You cite Boston University Professor Ibram X. Kendi's definition and he's been on the show multiple times like you have. sThat a racist is one who supports a racist policy through action or inaction or expressing a racist idea. Racist is one who supports a racist policy through action or inaction or expressing a racist idea. What's so bad about that?

John: Brian, what is the point of it? Come on, we're talking about social history. We're talking about race. These are complex things. What is the point of that simplistic dichotomy? What does it help? What kind of policies do you base on looking at society in that way? We're not talking about Legos, nor are we talking about quantum physics to not be so dismissive, but I don't get it. I don't see why we're pretending that's deep. Maybe I'm not deep either, but these little dichotomies that's not how the world works.

The world is not Manichaean, racist or anti-racist, and nothing in between, what's the point of that? I don't get it. I think that we need to embrace the actual complexity of the world in front of us. That's why I am impatient with that particular analysis. It's not that the word anti-racist is wrong, but to propose these simplistic dichotomies, which seem to me designed basically to make white people feel guilty, or maybe to light a fire under white people or something, I don't get it. I don't see what that has to do with Black people who need help out in the real world, which is what Woke Racism is about.

Brian: I think one thing that he tries to get at is that the definition of racist there places the individual in the context of supporting racist policies through actions or inactions, not just being a racist by declaring explicitly that whites are superior or screaming the N word at somebody. Inaction in the face of racist policy, that's structural becomes a racist act by giving racially unfair outcomes a leg up, is that idea so vague or dangerous?

John: I don't think it's dangerous, but honestly, Brian, it's utopian. It's this idea that every white person walking around needs to realize that if they are not actively engaged in battling systemic racism then they're complicit in something evil. I get where that comes from, but I'm not sure that frankly society will ever measure up to it. I think that we humans are too flawed and more to the point, I don't think it's necessary just like Martin Luther King wouldn't have thought it was necessary.

Just like Condoleezza Rice said on the view last week that she was raised to not think that anything like that was ever going to happen. I don't get it. We need to get out on the ground and in Woke Racism people should know, I spell out an agenda for Black America. It's not a book just of complaint, but why do white people need to realize all these things that they don't already? It's not 1965. I think that America has learned what racism is to a certain sophistication beyond anything anybody would have expected in 1965, that racism inside of you is a bad thing.

That wasn't in the era of Mad Men, that wasn't something that even educated white people thought much about. What we're being told now is that we need to go even further, that there needs to be this exquisite guilt about a highly abstract complicitness. I just don't see that that's necessary for the thriving of the Black community. Hear me, I don't mean the Black community will thrive through people shaping up and standing up straight and pulling up their own bootstraps.

The Black community needs help, but this psychological revolution, I don't get it. I understand that it feels good to make white people feel guilty. I understand that if you're white, it feels good to show that you're doing the right thing or thinking the right thing, but what about just getting out into the world and giving Black communities that need help real help? Guilt is not necessary for those sorts of things to happen. We know it because the civil rights revolution took place without this widespread white guilt. Wasn't about guilt, it was about all sorts of other things.

Brian: What's the real help as you see it?

John: Three things. War on drugs must stop, it destroys Black communities and I've written about this for about 15 years and I write about it again in the book. Vocational education is crucial, we must get rid of this idea that the default American experience is to go to college for four years. We need to have more respect for jobs where people are using their hands, or if not their hands, their brains, but vocational education it needs to be available. It needs to be celebrated. It needs to be free. That needs to be available to people.

Also, this sounds abstract, but there needs to be more effective approach to teaching reading to underserved kids. Phonics is very important. I know that sounds so tinny when we're thinking about, for example, the cops, but if a kid isn't taught to read right, and if a kid comes from a bookless home, if you don't read right, you never really like school and next thing you know you're on your way to all sorts of things that we don't even need to talk about. Those three things alone I think would turn the Black community upside down in 25 years, and I'm pretty cynical about how much we can reform the cops.

I know that most people are waiting for me to talk about the cops. I'm not sure how much can be done in the 18,000 police precincts that there are, but the three things that I'm talking about will make it much less likely that a Black person has to encounter the darn cops, and that's how I'm thinking of the cops. It's pragmatics here. Those are the things that I think really need to happen as opposed to the psychological revolution that we're encouraged to think about where I just don't see the argument that that's necessary to uplifting the Black community. That's my point. I don't see why it's necessary.

Brian: We're almost out of time. We're going to give our last minute or so, half to one more color and back to you for a last thought. Deseret in Park Slope. Deseret, I apologize in advance for cutting you short. You've got about 30 seconds.

Deseret: Okay. I was a student at Theater Roosevelt high school in the 80s. I am Black. I was raised by a poor grandmother who did not graduate from elementary school. What I would like to say is what Black, brown, and poor, primarily poor children need is preparation so that they can be equal to the students who are taking the exams. Getting rid of the exam does not help because the exams are one of the ways that people are lifted out of poverty.

Poverty for me is the overall thing that needs to be dealt with, preparing poor and working-class children so that they can have the educational background to be able to be equal with the students that they're going to meet in these high schools and specialty high schools and colleges.

Brian: Sounds like you're agreeing with John's premise on that? 100% I agree with him because I know what that preparation did for me. My parents did not read. In fact, my mother was anti-college. I had to sneak out of my house in the Bronx, in the '80s in order to go to college. I know what it means to be a poor working-class Black child who wants to go to a specialty high school, which my mother wouldn't even sign the documents for. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with poverty and a lack of preparation and a lack of access to resources. That's how I feel about it.

Brian: Deseret thank you very much. Well, John, you got 30 seconds for the last word.

John: You know what? She just said the last word, she sounds like somebody in a glossy black and white photo of a civil rights meeting in 1964 with Lorraine Hansberry there making comments. That is exactly the way we need to think. What Deseret said is my final comment.

Brian: John McWhorter's new book is called Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. He's also a Columbia University linguistics professor and New York Times columnist. His related column in The Times this week is called Wokeness Is Over Simplifying the American Creed. John, thanks a lot.

John: Thank you, Brian.

 

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