178 | John McWhorter on Race in America: Third Wave Anti-Racism, Lessons from BLM and Summer 2020, and the Case Against “Woke” Racism

The Realignment

Saager Enjeti, Technology, Policy, News, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, Politics, News Commentary, Public Policy, U.s. Politics, National Security, Economics

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John McWhorter, Columbia University professor, New York Times columnist, and author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, joins the Realignment to discuss the state of civil rights discourse in America and how the country can move past our post-Summer 2020 stalemate. Subscribe to The Realignment’s Substack Newsletter: https://therealignment.substack.com/ Visit The Realignment’s Bookshop to support the show and purchase Tim Marshall’s books: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-realignment-bookshop Listen to our bonus segment and learn more about Lincoln Network’s FACET Fellowship here: https://www.hackpolicy.org/facet Applications for Lincoln Network’s FACET Fellowship close on November 30, 2021.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall and Saga here, welcome back to the Realignment.
0:08.6	And so there were people back in the day who said that desegregation and the Voting Rights Act
0:14.7	weren't necessary. They look like fools to us now for reasons that I think can be laid out by
0:19.2	a ten year old. Some people would say it wasn't necessary to start treating racism as a moral
0:24.2	failing even on a casual level. Now that's not as clean and argument, but I think most relatively
0:29.9	enlightened human beings would see that it's hard to say that it's bad to help human beings get
0:35.6	past the natural tendency to be tribal and nasty about it. But that the third thing that we need
0:41.7	people to see themselves as complicit within the system before anything else can happen.
0:46.4	But one thing, how is it true that being this exquisitely guilty about your complicitness in
0:51.4	the system is going to change lives for people on the ground? So who does it help? And then also,
0:56.6	is it necessary? So it's one thing to say try to fight your racist impulses as much as you can,
1:02.0	but you're probably going to stay an imperfect person. It's another thing to say try to envision
1:07.8	yourself as part of a system and therefore culpable despite the fact that you didn't do anything,
1:14.0	and that this is encouraging in you a certain self hatred despite your basic cognitive health.
1:18.7	Good morning everybody, happy Tuesday. We are back with another episode of the Realignment.
1:28.9	This episode is a really exciting one. A couple of things to note here. One, we've got John
1:34.8	Nick Worder of Columbia University and The New York Times on his book, Woke Racism. How a new
1:41.6	religion has betrayed black America. Quick caveat, sorry couldn't make this episode, and John's
1:48.1	schedule got a little compressed. So we were only able to record for 30 minutes, quick note for
1:52.9	everyone. You're going to hear this. It is basically impossible to do what we do in only 30 minutes
1:58.8	in the sense that there is absolutely no way I could channel, saga, channel, left listeners,
2:05.1	channel, right listeners. So honestly, I just kind of went for it. You're going to hear a little more
	...

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