John McWhorter says that he is NOT a SELLOUT

[Secure Da Bag]

John McWhorter isn’t a sellout. Just a bougie nikka with college professor parents who seems pretty oblivious to the impact of class dynamics and can’t stop trying to explain blackness despite living a life only a small sliver of black people would find recognizable.

You've hit on an interesting point. Does economics define blackness?

 

[MajesticLion]

Key to the idea of the sellout is insincerity: He knows that what he is saying is untrue, but ranks making bucks higher than honesty or fairness. After all, presumably we wouldn’t expect the sincere conservative Black thinker to just shut up in view of some unquestionable larger truth. So many Black people are given to reviling the idea that all Black people think alike, after all.

Flawed premise identified.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

You've hit on an interesting point. Does economics define blackness?

No, but he likes to speak in generalities about some amorphous blackness (he’s not the only one), and usually comes up “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” conclusions. The black underclass in this country is economically deprived due to structural racism. He life experience doesn’t mirror that of the people he’s critiquing. His conclusions don’t really hold anymore merit than a well-to-do white man’s. He comes from a family of upperclass academics and speaks as if just because he’s yellow he has some degree of blackness quotient that grants him credibility to talk about how economically-oppressed Black people would be ok if they behaved better. His field of expertise is linguistics anyway. He should shut the fukk up and go say a poem in Gallaecian while playing the piano to whatever white bytch he’s fukking.

 

[skylove4]

You've hit on an interesting point. Does economics define blackness?

Not at all. They’re are plenty of rich and well off black folks who aren’t c00ns or dishonest peddlers of respectability politics.

 

[ogc163]

No, but he likes to speak in generalities about some amorphous blackness (he’s not the only one), and usually comes up “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” conclusions. The black underclass in this country is economically deprived due to structural racism. He life experience doesn’t mirror that of the people he’s critiquing. His conclusions don’t really hold anymore merit than a well-to-do white man’s. He comes from a family of upperclass academics and speaks as if just because he’s yellow he has some degree of blackness quotient that grants him credibility to talk about how economically-oppressed Black people would be ok if they behaved better. His field of expertise is linguistics anyway. He should shut the fukk up and go say a poem in Gallaecian while playing the piano to whatever white bytch he’s fukking.

His parents were academics but he did not come up in an upperclass neighborhood and environment, he has made reference to this point on several occasions.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

His parents were academics but he did not come up in an upperclass neighborhood and environment, he has made reference to this point on several occasions.

 

[ogc163]

McWhorter and by extension Loury's main criticisms are that most Black public intellectuals understate or underappreciate the role of culture when analyzing Black outcomes. And that structural explanation have been taken too far and are based on flawed premises, but they both acknowledge that structural racism does exist.

Even though I probably don't lean on the cultural explanation as much as they do, I do think there is value in providing good arguments against the dominant narratives. Further, it is good to point out there is more complexity to an issue when over simplified become prevalent.

But I do think there is a hint of jealousy and resentment on McWhorter and Loury's part, especially Loury who has disappointed me by inviting hacks on his show and harping on dead end issues. There have been some great books on human networks and network effects over the last couple of years that lean heavily on Loury's articulation of social capital and yet he never had the authors on his podcast. I would much rather hear a discussion about Black network gaps because of a lack of social capital rather than another episode revolving around why Ta-Nehisi Coates is overrated.