"Field" Is Now A Forbidden Word! Rhetorician Erec Smith On How To Make Everything Racist

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Erec Smith is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania and a prominent voice in the effort to bring greater nuance to conversations about anti-racism and identity movements. Erec was on The Unspeakable back in July of 2021 talking about Critical Race Theory, specifically what it means and where it began. Now he's back for a more free-ranging conversation about the state of racial discussions on campuses, in the workplace and in the culture more broadly. In this episode, he and Meghan discuss the Elimination of Harmful Language initiative released by Stanford last month, which classified words such as "brave" and "guru" as problematic. Erec offers practical advice about how to respond when Critical Race Theory or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion protocols are introduced into your school or workplace; for instance how to distinguish positive and useful implementations of CRT and DEI from counterproductive ones, what questions to ask, who to ask, and how to ask those questions in a non-threatening way. He talks about the concept of a "kairotic moment," why, as a black academic, he's become (in his words) a pariah in his field, and why he thinks contemporary anti-racism efforts have a hand in keeping racism alive.

This episode offers bonus content! Erec sticks around for some extra conversation that's available to paying subscribers at https://meghandaum.substack.com. Here, Meghan asks how Erec feels about his life circumstances at this moment–not just professionally but personally. Erec talks about the price he's paid for not toeing the party line, what it's like to live in a rural area as an unmarried middle aged person, and the loneliness of being out of ideological step with your peers and neighbors.

Guest Bio:

Erec Smith is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Although he has eclectic scholarly interests, Smith's primary focuses on the rhetorics of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy. He is a co-founder of Free Black Thought, a website dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within the black intelligentsia. Smith is a Writing Fellow for Heterodox Academy, a Senior Fellow for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and an advisor for Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest is Eric Smith. He is a
0:09.7	returning guest to the podcast, and he's going to talk about, among other things, issues of race.
0:16.7	Before I tell you more about him, just quickly, the unspeak easy retreats that I've been talking about
0:22.9	over the last several weeks are basically sold out. There's a retreat coming up in February,
0:30.6	February 18th and 19th, as well as one in the Seattle area in April. There may be a little room in those. I am trying the best I can
0:40.5	to accommodate more people, but there was huge interest. And, you know, the whole sort of magic
0:47.0	of their retreats is that they're so small. It's an intimate group. I'm capping it at about 15
0:52.4	participants generally. So if you are interested in those
0:57.1	retreats, feel free to get in touch, but that's where we're at this point. The good news is that
1:02.8	we are going to be rolling out the online community very soon. That is going to be a subscription-based
1:08.5	thing where you can join us and get in on any number of discussions.
1:13.6	You can connect with like-minded or even not like-minded people who are nonetheless interested in open discussions about all sorts of things.
1:24.1	We're going to have book clubs.
1:25.4	I'm going to be doing live streams.
1:27.0	I'm going to be interacting with people. And it're going to have book clubs. I'm going to be doing live streams. I'm going to be
1:27.6	interacting with people. And it's going to be really awesome. So I will keep you posted about that.
1:34.2	That's going to be a lot more accessible in terms of cost as well, rather than the retreats themselves.
1:42.1	Although we are going to be offering more of those in different places
1:45.9	throughout the country. And I will be making more announcements about those soon. So anyway,
1:50.3	the unspeak easy.com is where you go to find out about that. Again, it's for women only at this
1:55.7	point, but I am going to be expanding this whole platform down the road. So it welcomes everybody because
2:03.2	there has just been enormous interest in this from all sorts of people. So don't worry.
	...

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