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John McWhorter is a linguist who has made a small splash repping the more scientifically-minded mainstream center-left in papers like the New York Times and the Atlantic. According to Wikipedia, he was called a “radical centrist” 20 years ago. This characterization appears to stem largely from his view, the focus of much of his prolific extra-linguistic work, that America’s obsession with race is in some ways harming black people even as we’ve made dramatic egalitarian progress since the 90s.

The idea that “social justice warriors” are harmful isn’t new — I could swear that term predates the 2010s — but McWhorter’s unique spin is in the subtitle: “How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.”

And he really means that, writing:

I do not mean that these people’s ideology is ‘like’ a religion… I mean that it actually is a religion… An anthropologist would see no difference in type between Pentecostalism and this new form of antiracism.

To be precise on who “these people” are, the antiracists he’s referring to are the sort of White Fragility loving, Ta-Nehisi Coates quoting, virtue signaling Black Lives Matter-ers. These are the athletes in what I’ve been calling the “woke olympics” for some years now. But McWhorter, being a linguist — and doubling down on the religion angle — goes to great lengths to adopt and proselytize the term an essayist he admires has coined for them: the Elect.

I will not title them “social justice warriors.” That and other labels such as “the woke mob” are unsuitably dismissive… We will term these people the Elect. They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom… as having been chosen, as it were… as understanding something most do not.

I’m not sure I love it, but all right. Is this really a religion, though? McWhorter’s subsections address what he sees are clear parallels to the familiar religions: “The Elect have a clergy”; “The Elect have original sin” — white privilege, of course; “The Elect are evangelical”; “The Elect ban the heretic”; and on, and on. The one that landed for me is the idea that you can’t meaningfully explore any concepts with them: “white privilege”, “necessary allyism”, “doing the work”, you name it. They clam up, they turn it around to be an attack on you, it’s just that Chili Peppers song: “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.” In that sense, it is very much like a faith-based belief.

What’s attractive about this religion? It’s a lot clearer for white people today, who might feel like they missed the opportunity to claim the right side of history during the civil rights movement and are inventing another conflict to win. But for black people who buy into it, McWhorter has a tougher appeal to learned helplessness in two parts: fractured self-image from the ravages of Jim Crow — the noble victim for whom “alienation is therapeutic” — and imposed welfare from both well-meaning Great Society types and militant leftists hoping to bring about the end of capitalism. (Apparently much of McWhorter’s earlier scholarship focuses on this black helplessness idea, so this book touches only lightly upon it — but his claim that the National Welfare Rights Organization tried to collapse the economy on purpose didn’t quickly bear itself out from a quick Wikipedia dive, so I doubt whether this historical interpretation is robust.)

OK, but why is this religion harmful? And here’s where I agree: “Do not heed those who say that this religion isn’t important. Make no mistake: they’re coming for your kids.” What’s maybe most interesting about the book, then, is what it is not: it is not a handbook for changing minds. Rather, it’s a book that highlights what McWhorter sees as the most pernicious aspects of what the Elect do and, in that context, practical tips for peacefully co-existing without getting cancelled.

That said, McWhorter isn’t only a naysayer. He acknowledges the real and ongoing harms afflicting black people in America today, and he has a platform of priorities to address them:

1. Fight to end the war on drugs.
2. Make sure kids not from book-lined homes are taught to read with phonics.
3. Advocate vocational training for poor people and battle the idea that “real” people go to college.

What’s frustrating for me is that these seem like the most basic, common sense appeals we could imagine. Are they radical? But all we get from the left as a platform nowadays is DEI scolding and anti-Trumpism. Is anyone seriously working to improve our lives?

2021, 201 pages.

For the last two years, I have noticed that a theme has been emerging: Obama is a constitution-shredding war criminal who deserves to be in the big house, not the White House.

Whoa! Did I just say all that? No, I am not a born-again conservative or republican partisan. No, I am not a record-distorting far-left crazy with unreasonable expectations either (at least I don’t think I am). What I have been doing for a while now is paying fairly close attention to political news, and in particular the behaviour of the government. I have read Supreme Court decisions and paid attention to Congressional action, often writing my legislators (to apparently little avail). And most disturbingly, I have witnessed Obama take up Bush’s mantle on most important issues.

I understand that that is quite an assertion. Yes, he did succeed in reversing Bush’s ban on stem cell research. Yes, he did preside over the fairly popular and eventually successful movement to repeal DADT. But in many ways, Obama is a lot like Bush. Even the health care overhaul, his signal achievement, is likely to be an expensive affair, just like Bush’s massive health bill, the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. And that’s if it survives a Constitutional review by the Supreme Court. But there are other ways that Obama is just like Bush, especially in the realms of civil liberties and the war on Terror. In fact, Dick Cheney is so enamored of Obama’s direction in that department that Cheney essentially heaped praise on them both in an interview with NBC News: “I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate.”

So what is Obama’s record, really? And why should it matter? The two questions are related. The mainstream media has done, as is increasingly the norm, an excellent job of distracting attention away from the real issues, instead focusing on the most divisive and rancorous disagreements they can find. This has two effects: first, egregious violations of the law have been ignored, bringing instead to the fore petty disputes and insignificant news. Second, and as a result, facts and analysis have been replaced by wishful thinking and holistic reputations in deciding major questions.

Take for example, this line from Stephen Colbert in an episode of his show from last April: “Yes, Obama duped young people by not doing every single thing they want. So now, they’ll all vote Republican. It’s like when I want some bread, I won’t settle for half a loaf. Instead, I will have a muffin made of broken glass.” Colbert is a jokes man, but an influential one to be sure. Let’s unpack this sentiment, some flavour of which surely is held in earnest by many, at face value.

First, we have a straw man of ‘young people’ who were duped by Obama not doing every single thing they want. The implication here is that these young people expected him to do “every single thing” that they wanted, but no reasonable person could expect that. But more important is the diction: “every single thing” implies that Obama has done a lot of what he said he would do, enough that we can deride the straw man that won’t rest until he gets his entire agenda codified. Is that really a fair assessment of his record, analyzed both in isolation and against his campaign promises?

Second, we get an extreme comparison between Obama and his as-yet unknown republican challenger, as seen from the eyes of this straw man. Obama is only half a loaf of bread, but the republicans are like a muffin of broken glass! That isn’t even a food item! Half a loaf of bread will at least keep you alive, admittedly for only half the time a full one would, but a ‘muffin’ of broken glass will tear apart your digestive tract, leaving you to bleed internally to death. Are the policies of these opposing camps really that dramatically different?

An appeal to the facts is the only thing that can answer these questions. And an appeal to the facts, with my own analysis, is just what I mean to provide in a new page, Obama’s Record. I intend to break down Obama’s word and deed in several key areas, to leave it up the reader to determine for themselves how good or bad a president he has been and whether any of his actions are disqualifying for a second term. This post announces the creation of this series of subpages; at press time, only the parent page exists. But check back from time to time to see updates, and I will write blog posts announcing major entries.