"He is technically perfect. When you play Bach's music you have to understand that he's a mathematician and all the notes you play add up to something-they make sense. They always add up to climaxes, like ocean waves getting bigger and bigger until after a while when so many waves have gathered you have a great storm. Each note you play is connected to the next note, and every note has to be executed perfectly or the whole effect is lost. Once I understood Bach's music I never wanted to be anything other than a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music." --Nina Simone, from her autobiography, "I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone" (1992)
Great quote, and also one which does not contradict what John McWhorter said, which is that Nina Simone is not involved in the canon of Western classical music, whether or not it may have been an inspiration for her. I am also inspired by J.S. Bach, but that does not qualify my compositions to be studied in place of Brahms's, Chopin's, and Wagner's in a course focusing on Western classical music.
Glenn is further to the right, John is further to the left, but they can discuss things rationally. Sometimes they come to a mid-point and sometimes they agree to disagree but they always respect each other. I suspect most people are like this. We need to stop respecting those on either side who aren't. We will be insulted, deal with it, it is the only power these people have, refuse to give it to them.
@@jamesbarton1969 Amen. I enjoy watching debates at the Oxford Union. There's an agreed upon protocol and respect for order but the speakers are uncensored and vigorous.
@@edwardbmurphy6378 Have you ever dealt with either of them one on one? I have. Loury once called my writing "brilliant" and was "blown away" by my site and signed up. He wasn't too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task -- and chances are, you'll behave the same way and likely worse. I'd explain it but then you'd just start defending them before you even understand the issues involved (which is a gross breach in the principles upon with you put these people on a pedestal). The likes of Loury & McWhorter haven't solved anything, are making matters worse, and are being rewarded for it. If you don't come back with some sincere questions on the above, then you don't really wanna know the answers. . . .
“This anti-racism that we see is carried out in serene disregard for what it’s actual consequences are for people who need help. Serene disregard for any connection to the anti-racism that my parents would have recognized.” Absolutely wonderful. I love Mr. McWhorter.
I spent 30 years as a professor and his example from San Francisco is way beyond the crap even I remember. To freak out and fire someone for pointing out that the Chinese hesitation phrase is "Ne . .ge" is not just vicious and self-righteous cancellation on the part of students whose REAL issue is resentment of the professor's authority. It is VIOLENTLY anti-intellectual. So now we have a cow anytime something in a language of which we are ignorant sounds like a bad word in our language, and instead of learning the other language switch to punitive mode? This is truly the mark of a decadent and willfully ignorant as well as vicious "culture."
@@JOHN----DOEAnother beautifully stated observation. It’s very heartening to hear this. While the pseudo-reality of the internet/media is just that, a pseudo-reality, it feels like an overwhelming, encroaching threat to democracy and justice. I believe there are more people who feel this way than it appears. They just clam up out of fear of very negative consequences. However, as Mr. McWhorter points out in this speech, we need to be without fear. This is extremely serious, despite what the gaslighting apologists would have you believe. This pernicious and, as you astutely put it, violently anti-intellectual degradation to basic logic, reason, fairness and justice sows the seeds of our democracy’s demise. Yeah, that’s pretty serious. It’s not just, “oh, you know, the kids get a little out of hand sometimes,” or, “we’ll grow out of this, we just needed a little shake-up.” I used to find comfort in the latter roughly 5 years ago. Not anymore. What seemed a few years ago as something akin to societal growing pains, not unlike an adolescent undergoing raging hormonal activity and a painful growth spurt, or a 19-year-old who returns from freshman year at college and acts like the 2nd coming of Noam Chomsky, all of which is forgivable and will inevitably be outgrown, has now become something far more serious. I no longer feel, “aaaahh, we’ll outgrow this unpleasant phase.” We need to eschew fear and speak clearly and with cogency the truth as to how logic, reason, fairness and actual justice works.
John McWhorter should be required reading and listening for recent generations, but one of his influencers was the great Thomas Sowell, who has been writing and speaking to this for decades, and influenced McWhorter, Lowry, etc. Sowell’s books and YT talks are treasures of wisdom.
These are some of the best 20 min. I have ever spent. Brilliant analysis by John McWhorter. Yes, do the right thing. Stand up against the self-serving anti-racist mob.
With Dr. McWhorter one comes for the gently educational, witty, enlightening approach to philology. Now the good doctor is stepping up, pointing fearlessly to a much more urgent challenge. A ‘mensch’ indeed.
@@Rhythmicons you mean he detested both? 🤔 He slyly praised Jane Austen by stating that he couldn’t stand her writing “every time” he read it. If it was that bad, why did he read it more than once? The man was brilliant at tongue-in-cheek humor but very literal minded people often miss that.
@@pamelaroyce5285 Eric Lott devoted a few pages to this in Love and Theft (Oxford 1993) quoting from Twain's Autobiography: "If I could have the n***** show back again in its pristine purity and perfection I should have but little further use for opera....The minstrel troupes had good voices and both their solos and their choruses were a delight to me as long as the neg** show continued in existence." I don't think that it is as simple as not reading between Twain's lines here, but rather that Huckleberry Finn was indebted to minstrelsy. See: Lott 30-32.
This was so refreshing to hear. So many people when they talk about social issues like equalitics seem tempted to make the problem into some grand, overarching clash between the forces of good and evil, when I think a lot of times the nature of the problem is far more human. Professor McWhorter did a wonderful job here of providing a calmer, more even-handed perspective of things.
What a relief to hear someone speak in a gentle yet firm way about this. Typically I hear people responding to this ideology with harsh rhetoric and mockery. I think that has its place sometimes but this is the better way to do it. Be a stand up person.
Great speech! Vocal and frightening minority of people, they are religious fanatics. I am standing up when I see those people trying to cancel, to shame into submission myself or others. 😌
I appreciated his analysis of the now unemployed art curator. Shows the bankruptcy of the mentality that pounces upon normal spoken word. Long admirer of JMW! He’s a Mensch!
A reign of terror enforced by a small number of earnest but misguided people, and the reason that they get their way is because of how much progress we've made.
Fantastic, insightful & brave presentation full of truth based in reality! Who knows what kinds of backlash & flack he will get for saying these "blasphemous" things (remember: we are dealing with religious zealots), but these are things that a white person could not even say! This is an extremely important message that needs to be heard & heeded by everyone making decisions on such matters in our society! Thank you John!
You know, there's a certain kind of person that could sip knob creek and enjoy listening to John McWhorter give a speech on how he organizes the boxes in his attic. I might be that certain kind of person.
Wow, just wow. I wish I'd had Professor McWhorter for a teacher when I was in college, he's absolutely brilliant! I'm glad other people are seeing this wokeness or anti-racism for what it is, a misguided religion.
Alas, he is the product of a bygone era when higher ed in the U.S. actually produced educated and civilized people who were capable of critical thinking--the first principle of which is NOT to coddle your own feelings and ignorance but to challenge them.
The fantastic John McWhorter! Thinking about what he said about Western classical music, there is a great scene in the film Tár when she is taking a masterclass and collides with a young idealist woke student.
Thank you so much. I love that you note that we all have to be brave enough to stand up to this new religious puritanical orthodoxy. A new kind of witch burning with similar life destroying outcomes.
Heard Glenn & John talk about being to the UK on The Glenn Show Podcast; they mentioned John’s speech. Thanks so much for uploading and sharing it - it was great! So glad I found it.
Insightful and wise, its always a rich experience listening to John McWhorter. We are all made better humans when we allow ourselves to embrace his ideas.
The message is dead on but the elocution and delivery are masterful. Speaking without a note or script. Incredible. Who can do this anymore? Brilliance mixed with truth. Can’t be beat.
@@TheDmonet believe it or not it is a separate skill of mental organization beyond linguistics. It is an articulation beyond the knowledge of origin and structure of the spoken word. The mind behind the message…. It is wow!
@@swcordovaf Sure, but there are plenty of people who can do it. Have you watched the lectures by Prof. Michael Sugrue on the Western intellectual tradition, filmed over 30 years ago? In each lecture, Sugrue speaks eloquently and with excellent organization, rarely putting a verbal foot wrong , pacing back and forth around a podium for 45-50 minutes, all the while never looking at a note -- in something like 56 lectures that cover every major influence on Western thought from the Old Testament to post-modernism. Not that Professor McWhorter isn't impressive, he is, but Sugrue's lecturing skills are on a rarefied level that few people ever attain.
Thought provoking and intelligent. The world has never been so polarized, sadly, we need to highlight the good more. Yes there are still things to improve in society, but sometimes we have to concentrate a little more on the progress we have made.
I admire Mr. McWhorter for his courage to speak out. Regrettably, not enough people are listening to him. If they were, a lot of this woke stuff would be behind us.
Prof. McWhorter is such an intellectual hero. Keeping us from teetering over the abyss. Well, trying to. And a king of esoterica; kind of surprising that he hesitated over a Rube Goldberg reference.
Preach! This was a simple and thoughtful call to action for all of us simply to act like decent human beings. Clearly stated and succinct, this was a much-needed tonic for the historical moment we are living through.
This was an excellent message. I think people need to just stop being so afraid. I've witnessed it myself. What if you did lose your job? Yes, that's awful, but you will almost certainly have other opportunities open to you, especially if you're a person who actually has a spine.
I don’t always agree with Dr. McWhorter, but his points are always well thought out and skillfully articulated. There are contexts that he missed, but he didn’t have all day. Good stuff.
For quite some time now I've been suggesting in posts on various internet forums and social media that there's a growing need - and an opportunity to fill it by a growing number of individuals who, like John here, somehow manage to hold on to their sanity - to write a book (maybe followed/accompanied by a multi-part TH-cam seminar) called "How To Combat The Fear Of Being Called A Racist". Who among you thinks such a book - and what could grow out of it - would be a game changer in our culturally suicidal obsession with Guilt & Grievance?
Such a book, or even an educational program, would not only be a game changer, but is, I believe, and absolute necessity. Millions of decent people who have never engaged in any racist behaviors, or interfered in the life path of any person of color, are so terrified of being labeled racist, with all of the social and financial pain such a label would bring, that it has paralyzed not only their individual life development, but our national, collective well being.
We shouldn't agree that with accusations we are racist etc. However, we ought to say, "If I was, so what? There are worse things." Let's remember that racism is a sin invented recently, by the West. (No other cultures, contemporary or historical, even recognise racism as something wrong.) For various reasons we've pretended it's something terrible, thus handing the woke a club used to beat us all over the head. Let's take away the club by dismissing racism as unimportant--because in today's West, that's mostly the case. Deprived of their weapon, watch the woke crumble.
Diagnosing the problem is not enough. It is time to develop tactics and strategies to fight. The first step is to identify the 'earnest but misguided people responsible for this new fascism. Deprive them of power by stopping the fear. Supporting their victims. Then remove them from positions of power.
Wow, My man, great speech. Kudos to a mensch. What gets me is so many of these woke grifters are second and third rate talents and that's being generous.
Wonderful speech and gives me hope! A nice way to finish off the day as I started the day watching the debate between Michael, Eric Dyson, Jordan, Peterson, and which left me very angry.
@@mwfmtnman totally agree! I was listening to his book “a long time coming“ and I found myself extremely angry and pissed off! How he describes law-enforcement is shameful
Part 1 of 2: With respect, there are continuities between the equal opportunity ladder model Prof. John McWhorter talk about from the 60s and 70s and the new anti-racism model. One is in his example of the program of the Behavioural Science approach to analysing the social phenomena of "Why some people and some communities fail to instantiate "positive" data metrics of outcomes. That is, in terms framed by data outcomes, anyone not choosing to "get on that particular ladder" is a priori evidence of some kind of failure. That is surreptitiously the idea of justice and equality is made into metric relations of difference between groups. Thus metric difference is the Criteria of success. It is end "set"-ting (synchronic) but "Stochastic"* with respect to the "process" of that ends causal structure (diachronic). The Behavioural "diagnostic" model then centres around individuals, such that, if the end state is not towards equality f outcomes, the data might reveal either a problem with the "equal opportunity program" and/or the attitude and disposition of the individual. The former rests on an error of thinking the symmetry axioms of the synchronic data "sets" are congruent with symmetries of categorical diachronic structures (transitivity associativity index and norm ect). This error leads to placing the "source" of the problem in instituional structures of rules and then quickly from the far left background to the 50s and 60s Civil Rights movements (Adorno Gramsci Marcuse Frankfurt School in post war US) then in the attitudes and dispositions of people working "in" and "for" the "equal opportunity ladder programs, and in the attitudes and dispositions of their subjects or the people who "fail" to becomes their subjects. The "pragmatic context of philosophy of science" means the data serves more as s part of a tool set for the end state, rather than an, at least active search, for truth let alone a certain passive openness to Alethia. What then doesn't show itself or is even possible as can showing itself here, is the various complex relations between people in the subject populations and that they just might have their own individual situated adverbial notions attitudes dispositions of the good that will be at odds with the definition of the just as the equal by the Behavioural correction program for equal opportunity outcomes. Very quickly a black boy who plays football with his mates and wants to be a footballer not a person training in stem for a middle class job, will be "classed" as himself suffering various racist stereotypical attitudes and in need of further well-funded programs of correction for justice and equality. eg the search to expose him to role model middle class mathematicians not working class footballers. Hence then the Cultural Revolution is justified w.r.t liberal justice as capacity and capability positive rights and freedoms. End state structure as temporal continuity symmetries. It means endless interference in people’s lives who will increasingly be seen as mere Human Capital for the program as education in their homes community institutions in their streets. From the idea of an unintentional cultural and habitual traditional heteronomy of subjection as working class as the middle class understand still from Marx as mere repetition and reproduction of "bad" choices. Here, the capitalist and socialist view of labour coincide are not opposed, they agree that subjects are end set tools for their heteronomies. They agree in efficiency priorities but have different modes of action in Human Resources departments. My background was the health effects of nuclear radiation which distinguishes between "stochastic"* and "Determined" effects. Here by analogy determined is first in the subjects’ intentional notion of the good. This 60s 70s program just like the modern anti-racism ignores the import of intention.
"The soft bigotry of low expectations"
It's an inherent part of the postmodern liberal progressive worldview.
Rubbish 🗑.
"He is technically perfect. When you play Bach's music you have to understand that he's a mathematician and all the notes you play add up to something-they make sense. They always add up to climaxes, like ocean waves getting bigger and bigger until after a while when so many waves have gathered you have a great storm. Each note you play is connected to the next note, and every note has to be executed perfectly or the whole effect is lost. Once I understood Bach's music I never wanted to be anything other than a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music."
--Nina Simone, from her autobiography, "I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone" (1992)
Thank you for this quote
Great quote, and also one which does not contradict what John McWhorter said, which is that Nina Simone is not involved in the canon of Western classical music, whether or not it may have been an inspiration for her. I am also inspired by J.S. Bach, but that does not qualify my compositions to be studied in place of Brahms's, Chopin's, and Wagner's in a course focusing on Western classical music.
Spectacular speech. So grateful for John's clear and steady voice and Glenn's as well.
Glenn is further to the right, John is further to the left, but they can discuss things rationally. Sometimes they come to a mid-point and sometimes they agree to disagree but they always respect each other. I suspect most people are like this. We need to stop respecting those on either side who aren't. We will be insulted, deal with it, it is the only power these people have, refuse to give it to them.
@@jamesbarton1969 Amen. I enjoy watching debates at the Oxford Union. There's an agreed upon protocol and respect for order but the speakers are uncensored and vigorous.
those two intellectually honest blokes are national treasurers
@@edwardbmurphy6378 Have you ever dealt with either of them one on one? I have. Loury once called my writing "brilliant" and was "blown away" by my site and signed up. He wasn't too keen on the truth when I took his hero to task -- and chances are, you'll behave the same way and likely worse. I'd explain it but then you'd just start defending them before you even understand the issues involved (which is a gross breach in the principles upon with you put these people on a pedestal). The likes of Loury & McWhorter haven't solved anything, are making matters worse, and are being rewarded for it.
If you don't come back with some sincere questions on the above, then you don't really wanna know the answers.
. . .
“This anti-racism that we see is carried out in serene disregard for what it’s actual consequences are for people who need help. Serene disregard for any connection to the anti-racism that my parents would have recognized.”
Absolutely wonderful.
I love Mr. McWhorter.
I spent 30 years as a professor and his example from San Francisco is way beyond the crap even I remember. To freak out and fire someone for pointing out that the Chinese hesitation phrase is "Ne . .ge" is not just vicious and self-righteous cancellation on the part of students whose REAL issue is resentment of the professor's authority. It is VIOLENTLY anti-intellectual. So now we have a cow anytime something in a language of which we are ignorant sounds like a bad word in our language, and instead of learning the other language switch to punitive mode? This is truly the mark of a decadent and willfully ignorant as well as vicious "culture."
@@JOHN----DOEAnother beautifully stated observation. It’s very heartening to hear this. While the pseudo-reality of the internet/media is just that, a pseudo-reality, it feels like an overwhelming, encroaching threat to democracy and justice.
I believe there are more people who feel this way than it appears. They just clam up out of fear of very negative consequences.
However, as Mr. McWhorter points out in this speech, we need to be without fear. This is extremely serious, despite what the gaslighting apologists would have you believe.
This pernicious and, as you astutely put it, violently anti-intellectual degradation to basic logic, reason, fairness and justice sows the seeds of our democracy’s demise.
Yeah, that’s pretty serious. It’s not just,
“oh, you know, the kids get a little out of hand sometimes,” or,
“we’ll grow out of this, we just needed a little shake-up.”
I used to find comfort in the latter roughly 5 years ago. Not anymore.
What seemed a few years ago as something akin to societal growing pains, not unlike an adolescent undergoing raging hormonal activity and a painful growth spurt, or a 19-year-old who returns from freshman year at college and acts like the 2nd coming of Noam Chomsky, all of which is forgivable and will inevitably be outgrown, has now become something far more serious. I no longer feel, “aaaahh, we’ll outgrow this unpleasant phase.”
We need to eschew fear and speak clearly and with cogency the truth as to how logic, reason, fairness and actual justice works.
John McWhorter should be required reading and listening for recent generations, but one of his influencers was the great Thomas Sowell, who has been writing and speaking to this for decades, and influenced McWhorter, Lowry, etc.
Sowell’s books and YT talks are treasures of wisdom.
Yoo seem more hurt by anti racism than racism.
McWhorter stinks.
These are some of the best 20 min. I have ever spent. Brilliant analysis by John McWhorter. Yes, do the right thing. Stand up against the self-serving anti-racist mob.
John is always a voice of wisdom and sanity - much needed today.
Thank you Prof. McWhorter as always for being the voice of reason 😌
😂🤣🤣
John, you're an international treasure.
“There’s a bravery that’s necessary at this point.” Great leadership by a public intellectual. Thank you, sir
A thorough, unemotional and salient observation on the mess we are increasingly drawn into. Thank you, Professor McWhorter.
Shut up.
Professor McWhoter, sir, you have my utmost respect. Thank you for speaking truth in a way we can understand.
The clearest thinking, most insightful and most reasonable man in America. Professor McWhorter, thank you for your service to the country.
With Dr. McWhorter one comes for the gently educational, witty, enlightening approach to philology. Now the good doctor is stepping up, pointing fearlessly to a much more urgent challenge. A ‘mensch’ indeed.
You know, it's interesting that I have never actually heard him speak oh that topic! But now I absolutely must!
Thank you for that 'recommendation'!
The magic of John McWhorter
"I have no race prejudices... All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."
- Mark Twain
😂 “…he can’t be any worse.” 😂
Wonderful and hilarious!
Mark Twain also though that the minstrel show was on the same league as opera.
@@Rhythmicons you mean he detested both? 🤔 He slyly praised Jane Austen by stating that he couldn’t stand her writing “every time” he read it. If it was that bad, why did he read it more than once? The man was brilliant at tongue-in-cheek humor but very literal minded people often miss that.
@@pamelaroyce5285 I don't think he detested minstrelsy at all, rather the opposite.
@@pamelaroyce5285 Eric Lott devoted a few pages to this in Love and Theft (Oxford 1993) quoting from Twain's Autobiography: "If I could have the n***** show back again in its pristine purity and perfection I should have but little further use for opera....The minstrel troupes had good voices and both their solos and their choruses were a delight to me as long as the neg** show continued in existence." I don't think that it is as simple as not reading between Twain's lines here, but rather that Huckleberry Finn was indebted to minstrelsy. See: Lott 30-32.
Excellence! McWhorter always has a way with words. So well put.
This was so refreshing to hear. So many people when they talk about social issues like equalitics seem tempted to make the problem into some grand, overarching clash between the forces of good and evil, when I think a lot of times the nature of the problem is far more human. Professor McWhorter did a wonderful job here of providing a calmer, more even-handed perspective of things.
What a relief to hear someone speak in a gentle yet firm way about this. Typically I hear people responding to this ideology with harsh rhetoric and mockery. I think that has its place sometimes but this is the better way to do it. Be a stand up person.
Great speech! Vocal and frightening minority of people, they are religious fanatics. I am standing up when I see those people trying to cancel, to shame into submission myself or others. 😌
The problem is that the woke minority controls education, the mainstream media, and most of the major corporations.
Extremely important lecture. Everyone needs to hear this. Pass it on.
What?
Like AIDS or something.
I appreciated his analysis of the now unemployed art curator. Shows the bankruptcy of the mentality that pounces upon normal spoken word. Long admirer of JMW! He’s a Mensch!
A reign of terror enforced by a small number of earnest but misguided people, and the reason that they get their way is because of how much progress we've made.
Is that a riddle?
Fantastic, insightful & brave presentation full of truth based in reality!
Who knows what kinds of backlash & flack he will get for saying these "blasphemous" things (remember: we are dealing with religious zealots), but these are things that a white person could not even say!
This is an extremely important message that needs to be heard & heeded by everyone making decisions on such matters in our society!
Thank you John!
You know, there's a certain kind of person that could sip knob creek and enjoy listening to John McWhorter give a speech on how he organizes the boxes in his attic. I might be that certain kind of person.
Keep up the good work, John McWhorter.
Fantastic, engrossing, inspiring! McWhorter at his most eloquent best!
🦧
One of the few grown-ups remaining among the commentariat.
“Reign of terror”… spot on Prof.
Wow, just wow. I wish I'd had Professor McWhorter for a teacher when I was in college, he's absolutely brilliant! I'm glad other people are seeing this wokeness or anti-racism for what it is, a misguided religion.
Effortless inspirational rhetoric !
I can never get enough of John McWhorter’s grounded and eloquent wisdom!
He is wise and objective man!
Alas, he is the product of a bygone era when higher ed in the U.S. actually produced educated and civilized people who were capable of critical thinking--the first principle of which is NOT to coddle your own feelings and ignorance but to challenge them.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you so so much, Professor McWhorter, for your clear analysis, your precise words and your courage.
'theres a bravery thats necessary at this point.'
PERFECT.
The fantastic John McWhorter! Thinking about what he said about Western classical music, there is a great scene in the film Tár when she is taking a masterclass and collides with a young idealist woke student.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
Thank you so much. I love that you note that we all have to be brave enough to stand up to this new religious puritanical orthodoxy. A new kind of witch burning with similar life destroying outcomes.
Thank God for John McWhorter
So very true ; sometimes I feel that rational thought is disappearing
Great as always John. I'm glad you're out there John!
Heard Glenn & John talk about being to the UK on The Glenn Show Podcast; they mentioned John’s speech. Thanks so much for uploading and sharing it - it was great! So glad I found it.
Brilliant as ever Prof. John McWhorter. Stand-up people
Insightful and wise, its always a rich experience listening to John McWhorter. We are all made better humans when we allow ourselves to embrace his ideas.
Wow this man is a national treasure. Transcendently articulate, fair minded and coming from a place of such simple decency.
Fair what??
WOW! Thank you Prof McWhorter. I'm not sure I have the courage.
I always like a speaker who gives examples
Absolutely brilliant 👏🏽
There's a bravery that is necessary
Spot on John
❤ Prof McWhorter!
The message is dead on but the elocution and delivery are masterful. Speaking without a note or script. Incredible. Who can do this anymore? Brilliance mixed with truth. Can’t be beat.
He's a linguistics professor. He's a professional at this. Thank goodness for him.
@@TheDmonet believe it or not it is a separate skill of mental organization beyond linguistics. It is an articulation beyond the knowledge of origin and structure of the spoken word. The mind behind the message…. It is wow!
@@swcordovaf Sure, but there are plenty of people who can do it. Have you watched the lectures by Prof. Michael Sugrue on the Western intellectual tradition, filmed over 30 years ago? In each lecture, Sugrue speaks eloquently and with excellent organization, rarely putting a verbal foot wrong , pacing back and forth around a podium for 45-50 minutes, all the while never looking at a note -- in something like 56 lectures that cover every major influence on Western thought from the Old Testament to post-modernism. Not that Professor McWhorter isn't impressive, he is, but Sugrue's lecturing skills are on a rarefied level that few people ever attain.
My greatest intellectual hero!
He has no intellect so this is baffling.
@@ondolite3789 Good that I made you think! Seems that it is a rather rare thing
@@ondolite3789 So you believe all disparities between whites and blacks are due to structural racism? Howabout the Asians then?
@@ondolite3789 I guess you are one of the Elects.
@@ondolite3789 If it's wet, drink it. That's my motto in life.
More from this guy, please!
Beautiful speech!
Thought provoking and intelligent. The world has never been so polarized, sadly, we need to highlight the good more. Yes there are still things to improve in society, but sometimes we have to concentrate a little more on the progress we have made.
Your guts to reveal your opinion needs appreciation.
Would love to see John present his ideas at the Oxford Union
Praise all the gods for this man. ❤️
Always good analysis, thank you. The Woke stuff is incoherent. One consequence is that people no longer know how to recognize legitimate complaints.
Very thoughtful address.
This is a remarkable speech 💯
Man I love John McWhorter, what a strong and true voice in the sea of agendas, guised as "for the people".
Amazing!!! Love John McWhorter!!
I admire Mr. McWhorter for his courage to speak out. Regrettably, not enough people are listening to him. If they were, a lot of this woke stuff would be behind us.
Shame this doesn’t have more exposure.
Prof. McWhorter is such an intellectual hero. Keeping us from teetering over the abyss. Well, trying to. And a king of esoterica; kind of surprising that he hesitated over a Rube Goldberg reference.
Preach!
This was a simple and thoughtful call to action for all of us simply to act like decent human beings.
Clearly stated and succinct, this was a much-needed tonic for the historical moment we are living through.
😀
Gives me hope that there is still the capacity for sanity and reason in our society.
Thanks for putting this out there.
This was an excellent message. I think people need to just stop being so afraid. I've witnessed it myself. What if you did lose your job? Yes, that's awful, but you will almost certainly have other opportunities open to you, especially if you're a person who actually has a spine.
What a brilliant, straightforward piece of rhetoric.
Thank you, John McWhorter
This video needs to be SHARED
I don’t always agree with Dr. McWhorter, but his points are always well thought out and skillfully articulated. There are contexts that he missed, but he didn’t have all day. Good stuff.
That example from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is exactly what I would expect from a modern art museum in San Francisco. Insanity.
A real mensch. Please keep it up, Professor.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
For quite some time now I've been suggesting in posts on various internet forums and social media that there's a growing need - and an opportunity to fill it by a growing number of individuals who, like John here, somehow manage to hold on to their sanity - to write a book (maybe followed/accompanied by a multi-part TH-cam seminar) called "How To Combat The Fear Of Being Called A Racist". Who among you thinks such a book - and what could grow out of it - would be a game changer in our culturally suicidal obsession with Guilt & Grievance?
Such a book, or even an educational program, would not only be a game changer, but is, I believe, and absolute necessity.
Millions of decent people who have never engaged in any racist behaviors, or interfered in the life path of any person of color, are so terrified of being labeled racist, with all of the social and financial pain such a label would bring, that it has paralyzed not only their individual life development, but our national, collective well being.
No good. People don't read.
We shouldn't agree that with accusations we are racist etc. However, we ought to say, "If I was, so what? There are worse things." Let's remember that racism is a sin invented recently, by the West. (No other cultures, contemporary or historical, even recognise racism as something wrong.) For various reasons we've pretended it's something terrible, thus handing the woke a club used to beat us all over the head. Let's take away the club by dismissing racism as unimportant--because in today's West, that's mostly the case. Deprived of their weapon, watch the woke crumble.
@@nevbarnes1034 I'd say you're right. It's a crime invented specifically to goad white people into making concessions and giving gifts.
Brilliant speaker, nails the topic
Excellent talk! Thanks a lot!
This man is an artist with words... and thank god for that. Thank you John for helping them understand clearly.
He’s a linguist, he should be.
What is truly needed is a Edward R. Murrow/Sen. Joseph Mc Carthy moment.
Great job professor. Insight. Be nice to people.
Great speech professor.
thanks....a breath of fresh air
Excellent thanks. You have added greatly to my understanding
Diagnosing the problem is not enough. It is time to develop tactics and strategies to fight. The first step is to identify the 'earnest but misguided people responsible for this new fascism. Deprive them of power by stopping the fear. Supporting their victims. Then remove them from positions of power.
A voice of reason.
Such profundity! that I wish he gave us 30 more seconds of his allotted 20
A tour de force! 👏
John is the uber-mensch, the world needs more mensches.
Wow, My man, great speech. Kudos to a mensch. What gets me is so many of these woke grifters are second and third rate talents and that's being generous.
John, you’re a mensch.
Well said!
I love you John - concise logic that brings us together - what was the thing poking through the curtain ?
Wonderful speech and gives me hope! A nice way to finish off the day as I started the day watching the debate between Michael, Eric Dyson, Jordan, Peterson, and which left me very angry.
Dyson is such a racist POS. Can't stand more than a minute of his garbage.
@@mwfmtnman totally agree! I was listening to his book “a long time coming“ and I found myself extremely angry and pissed off! How he describes law-enforcement is shameful
Double thumbs up!!!
Brilliant!
Part 1 of 2: With respect, there are continuities between the equal opportunity ladder model Prof. John McWhorter talk about from the 60s and 70s and the new anti-racism model. One is in his example of the program of the Behavioural Science approach to analysing the social phenomena of "Why some people and some communities fail to instantiate "positive" data metrics of outcomes. That is, in terms framed by data outcomes, anyone not choosing to "get on that particular ladder" is a priori evidence of some kind of failure. That is surreptitiously the idea of justice and equality is made into metric relations of difference between groups. Thus metric difference is the Criteria of success. It is end "set"-ting (synchronic) but "Stochastic"* with respect to the "process" of that ends causal structure (diachronic). The Behavioural "diagnostic" model then centres around individuals, such that, if the end state is not towards equality f outcomes, the data might reveal either a problem with the "equal opportunity program" and/or the attitude and disposition of the individual. The former rests on an error of thinking the symmetry axioms of the synchronic data "sets" are congruent with symmetries of categorical diachronic structures (transitivity associativity index and norm ect). This error leads to placing the "source" of the problem in instituional structures of rules and then quickly from the far left background to the 50s and 60s Civil Rights movements (Adorno Gramsci Marcuse Frankfurt School in post war US) then in the attitudes and dispositions of people working "in" and "for" the "equal opportunity ladder programs, and in the attitudes and dispositions of their subjects or the people who "fail" to becomes their subjects. The "pragmatic context of philosophy of science" means the data serves more as s part of a tool set for the end state, rather than an, at least active search, for truth let alone a certain passive openness to Alethia. What then doesn't show itself or is even possible as can showing itself here, is the various complex relations between people in the subject populations and that they just might have their own individual situated adverbial notions attitudes dispositions of the good that will be at odds with the definition of the just as the equal by the Behavioural correction program for equal opportunity outcomes. Very quickly a black boy who plays football with his mates and wants to be a footballer not a person training in stem for a middle class job, will be "classed" as himself suffering various racist stereotypical attitudes and in need of further well-funded programs of correction for justice and equality. eg the search to expose him to role model middle class mathematicians not working class footballers. Hence then the Cultural Revolution is justified w.r.t liberal justice as capacity and capability positive rights and freedoms. End state structure as temporal continuity symmetries. It means endless interference in people’s lives who will increasingly be seen as mere Human Capital for the program as education in their homes community institutions in their streets. From the idea of an unintentional cultural and habitual traditional heteronomy of subjection as working class as the middle class understand still from Marx as mere repetition and reproduction of "bad" choices. Here, the capitalist and socialist view of labour coincide are not opposed, they agree that subjects are end set tools for their heteronomies. They agree in efficiency priorities but have different modes of action in Human Resources departments. My background was the health effects of nuclear radiation which distinguishes between "stochastic"* and "Determined" effects. Here by analogy determined is first in the subjects’ intentional notion of the good. This 60s 70s program just like the modern anti-racism ignores the import of intention.
A prince among men.
Wonderful.
“It must be stopped” 👍👍☑️
It must be stopped!