John McWhorter — Reckoning with the Relics of Racism
The Glenn Show
Glenn Loury
4.8 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2021
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John McWhorter is back for this week’s episode of The Glenn Show. In it, we discuss John’s new gig writing a newsletter for the New York Times. Anyone wondering whether he’s being stifled by the paper’s editorial sensibilities will be glad to hear the answer is a definite “no.” We spend a while discussing John’s recent piece about the removal of a “racist” rock from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus after administration gave in to student activists. From there we move on to a broader discussion of the historical relationship between the slave trade and American universities. We ask whether modern universities are morally culpable for the sins of the distant past. The scope broadens even further as we ask whether we can ever truly extricate the benefits of the modern world from histories of brutality and genocide. And finally, we move on to a discussion about black conservatives and accusations of “selling out.” This has particular relevance for the case of Larry Elder, a black conservative who is currently nipping at the heels of Gavin Newsom in the California governor’s recall.
This is a deep and provocative discussion, and I hope you’ll join in by commenting below. Let me know what you think!
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0:00 John's new gig writing for the New York Times
5:01 Wisconsin students get a "racist" rock removed from campus
16:39 Are present-day universities morally accountable for their involvement in the slave trade?
26:38 Debating the legacy of Christopher Columbus
40:18 Can we extricate modernity's benefits from its history of brutality and genocide?
50:52 Is California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder a sellout?
Links
John's new New York Times newsletter
John’s piece, “The Performative Antiracism of Black Students at the U. of Wisconsin”
John’s piece, “Let’s talk about ‘Sellouts’”
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, John McWhorter. |
| 0:03.6 | How are you? |
| 0:04.6 | Hi. |
| 0:05.6 | How are you? |
| 0:06.6 | Doing well, Glenn Lowry here of the Glenn Show with my conversation partner every other |
| 0:10.0 | week. |
| 0:11.2 | John McWhorter, he is a linguist and author, teaches at Columbia University, writes regularly |
| 0:16.3 | for the New York Times, John. |
| 0:20.2 | And I am a professor at Brown University, a professor of economics and international |
| 0:24.4 | and public affairs. |
| 0:26.4 | And I am also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
| 0:30.9 | I'm proud to report. |
| 0:34.1 | And we're here to do the thing that we do. |
| 0:36.3 | Black guys at bloggingheads.tv talking about what we talk about. |
| 0:41.0 | So what's up, John? |
| 0:42.0 | Well, actually, I know what's up. |
| 0:44.6 | And you are really making a splash in your debut as a twice weekly newsletter contributor |
| 0:53.4 | to the New York Times newsletter. |
| 0:55.0 | You want to tell the audience again about this new move that McWhorter is making. |
| 1:00.6 | It's a subscriber newsletter at the times. |
| 1:05.1 | And so what they're doing is they're creating this whole new page of newsletters and on one |
| 1:09.0 | of many. |
... |
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