President Donald J. Trump meets with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional leadership Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
In a recent post, the Manhattan Contrarian addressed the problems sweeping through academia, the media, and corporations. Over the past few years, antiracism has inundated these institutions, writes Francis Menton.
Mr. Menton begins his post with Ibram Kendi’s famous articulation of what he calls “antiracism:”
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
As Mr. Menton (aka the Manhattan Contrarian) points out, “simply treating black people as adults and expecting them to make it on their own in a non-discriminatory world is not an acceptable remedy.”
Instead, blacks are to be permanently dependent on assistance from the government and/or whites.
In a post back in April 2019, Mr. Menton notes the “antiracism” agenda evidences:
the utter contempt in which the self-anointed elites of our country hold members of minority groups, most particularly African Americans. Somehow, these elites — or at least some very substantial number of them — have decided that African Americans are not capable of accepting personal responsibility in life or of being treated like adults.
A small but growing group of black thinkers are seeing through the smokescreen of “Orwellian antiracist verbiage.” The MC gives a shout-out to these hardy souls who are calling out the ideology for what is: destructive to the supposedly intended beneficiaries.
John McWhorter. a Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, and thus not really a political commentator in his day job. Nevertheless, he has become increasingly outspoken on the subjects of Critical Race Theory and “antiracism.” In January he started a new blog at Substack called “It Bears Mentioning,” which has been substantially devoted to these issues.
McWhorter’s post on February 28 was titled “Is it racist to expect black kids to do math for real?” With the passing weeks and months, McWhorter has been mincing fewer and fewer words. On April 22, it was “Attention to detail is white?” But the MC’s favorite, and the most emphatic yet, is his recent column from April 28, with the title “Do black people enjoy being told they are weak and dumb?”
Excerpt: “This KenDiAngelonianism, in its infantilization of black people for purposes of white self-congratulation, is racist, as I have discussed in this space recently. Perhaps the only way to discourage its takeover of our educational institutions will be for black people to start protesting against it on those terms, because abjuring being racist is what The Elect consider a paramount, dealbreaker reason for living.”
Glenn Loury, a Professor of Economics at Brown, is a frequent collaborator with McWhorter on podcasts.
On April 28, Bari Weiss published on her Substack a symposium on “systemic racism” to which Loury made a contribution.
Excerpt: “Denouncing ‘systemic racism’ and invoking ‘white supremacy,’ and shouting ‘black lives matter,’ while 8,000 black homicides a year go unmentioned — these are maneuvers of avoidance and blame-shifting. The irony is that so many of us decry ‘systemic racism,’ even as we simultaneously demand that this very same ‘system’ deliver us.” He’s using gentler terminology than McWhorter, but the point is not very different.
Deroy Murdock, a political commentator, frequently publishes at outlets like National Review and Fox News.
In a piece at Fox News yesterday, Murdock denounced the Democratic Party for not standing up against the racism of Critical Race Theory and “antiracist” ideology: “The Democrat Party has become America’s headquarters for racism and anti-Black bigotry. . . . To see what racism and race-baiting look like, peer no further than today’s Democrat-Left. From relentless obsession with critical race theory, baseless claims of ‘systemic racism,’ critical race theory brainwashing sessions, to delivery of health care based on skin color, Democrats and their ideological brethren see everything through black-and-white glasses.”
Robert Woodson and 1776 Unites, a long-time civil rights activist and author, who is not affiliated with any university (as far as Mr. Menton knows) Woodson has his own organization called the Woodson Center to promote his ideas.
In 2020 he founded something called 1776 Unites, which describes itself as follows: “Radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic, we hope to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within, and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.”
The website of 1776 Unites lists some 19 scholars affiliated with the effort, including names like McWhorter and Loury, among others you may have heard of like Carol Swain, Coleman Hughes, Jason Hill, and Wilfred Reilly.
Unnamed young black woman. Steven Hayward at PowerLine today links to a video clip of a young black woman (Menton doesn’t know her name) reacting to a self-righteous video from progressive activist Alissa Milano. Milano begins her video saying “For those of us who are not black men, imagine watching the news and seeing . . .”
The young Unnamed Black Woman responds:
“Imagine being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal on TV are one and the same because you look alike. Imagine being told by society that white people can be all that they can be, but you as a black man the content of your character is completely irrelevant and you are the color of your skin and that is all you will ever be. Imagine being told that you can’t figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. . . .”
“Well done, young woman,” praises Mr. Menton.
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