This isn't a good review of John McWhorter's recent book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Nope. For that I'd have to do a lot more work and time is short.
In brief, McWhorter, a black professor of linguistics at Columbia U., argues in six quick chapters that CRT and all that racial wokeness is a new religion that is unintentionally racist and harmful to black Americans. He calls the members of this new religion the Elect. He offers a way to genuinely help black children instead of teaching them all that CRT nonsense and a way to deal with the Elect.
McWhorter is a leftist and starts by saying he's writing for fellow leftists. While he doesn't say what his own beliefs are, in arguing that wokeness is a new religion, he treats religious belief as essentially irrational, unprovable, and not amenable to rational argument. He reminds me of Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist who is also on the left but who argues for Enlightenment rationalism as well as freedom of thought and speech.
As for helping black children, his answers are nothing new: "1. End the war on drugs." "2. Teach reading properly", i.e., via phonics. And "3. Get past the idea that everybody must go to college" and focus a lot more on vocational education.
His method for dealing with the Elect is remarkably similar to what I've heard from the right. In a section titled "Just say no", he writes, "What we must do about the Elect is stand up to them. They rule by inflicting terror ..." A key part of that, he claims, is that people need to get over their fear of being called racists in public (172-3). You can imagine what he says in the next section titled "Separation of church and state." Finally, he offers sample scripts for how these conversations with the Elect might go. Kinda interesting how he imagines them.
A significant part of the value of this book for me was how he gets to these conclusions. I won't even attempt a summary; the value is in his complete arguments, because he argues rationally from the left's viewpoint.
There are things I disagree with McWhorter about, but it's a good book, a quick read, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this topic, especially if you live or work in a woke environment.
