> “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.”
That's the dumbest, most offensive thing I've read in quite a while. Perhaps among a certain set of people that is true (call those people "racists" as shorthand). But as an actual Black person, it's ridiculously offensive to define "Black culture" that way.
> white people calling themselves our _saviors_ make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species
This belongs to a category of arguments that reset time to zero as the sentence is being written. As such, it's almost beneath rebuttal. (If you require rebuttal, any child who has lost her milk teeth can provide sufficient rebuttal.)
> which compromises am I missing when I read this article?
The compromise they do not have to make is that of realizing that the claptrap they read (some of which you quoted) is pandering to them and their infantile understanding of the United States.
I got that but the problem is that caricature is only presented in some views of pop culture. The Obamas, Kamala Harris, Beyonce, Viola Davis, and Chadwick Boseman are pop culture.
Anyone who chooses to present the pop culture caricature described by McWhorter is making a racially-guided editorial decision.
The most powerful part of the current antiracist movement is the Congressmembers and members of the current administration who are working on the systemic apparatus, for example by promoting a new Voting Rights Act. (Indeed, there is a certain obliqueness in his references to "The Elect" as a group of people while ignoring the role of elected officials. This, as over 100 bills wind through legislatures with the singular goal of reducing voting access for minority groups.)
McWhorter ignores the policy arm that makes a real difference in the lives of tens of millions in favor of elevating the critiques of a very narrow set of people. I can go the rest of my life without interacting with The Elect, but the laws this 116th Congress enacts me may follow me the rest of my life.
By elevating The Elect to a position they do not occupy outside of small niche areas like academia, McWhorter creates a straw man that he then proceeds to tear down. It's a pretty weak argument for an academic of his intellect to make.
I thought the passage was valuable because it made a point about individualism. If conservatives or liberals believe in that caricature, then the article is challenging their perception.
That's the dumbest, most offensive thing I've read in quite a while. Perhaps among a certain set of people that is true (call those people "racists" as shorthand). But as an actual Black person, it's ridiculously offensive to define "Black culture" that way.
> white people calling themselves our _saviors_ make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species
This belongs to a category of arguments that reset time to zero as the sentence is being written. As such, it's almost beneath rebuttal. (If you require rebuttal, any child who has lost her milk teeth can provide sufficient rebuttal.)
> which compromises am I missing when I read this article?
The compromise they do not have to make is that of realizing that the claptrap they read (some of which you quoted) is pandering to them and their infantile understanding of the United States.