(ThyBlackMan.com) We have all been admonished to “never say never”, but I’m pretty certain that I’ll never understand John McWhorter, PhD., a professor at Columbia University and New York Times Opinion writer. As I wrote in a column about McWhorter two years ago, he often downplays the role that racism plays in limiting opportunities for African Americans, of which McWhorter is one.
Thus, I find it strange — and hypocritical — that McWhorter suggests that racism does in fact keep Blacks from being acknowledged for our achievements. However, McWhorter makes this argument differently than most of us do. The following is from the column that I referenced:
“McWhorter goes on to criticize Dr. Gay’s lack of scholarly output — as defined by academic articles and books written — in comparison to some of her predecessors. In short, he believes that Gay’s relative dearth of academic bona fides, especially in light of allegations of plagiarism, suggest that she was selected for her role due to her race rather than her qualifications.”
I wrote this in the context of McWhorter speaking out against Claudine Gay, the first African American, and second woman, to be selected as president of Harvard University. McWhorter strongly favored Gay resigning her role, which she eventually did. As he often does, McWhorter gave cover to racist presuppositions regarding alleged Black inferiority. But he is a hypocrite.
McWhorter is silent regarding mediocre white Americans who assume lofty leadership roles. As far as I am aware, he has said nothing about the menagerie of President Donald Trump’s appointees, many of whom do not come anywhere close to having the qualifications of their predecessors. These include Pete Hegseth, Linda McMahon, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller and many others.
Where is McWhorter’s outrage in those instances? To his “credit,” Trump frequently doesn’t even bother to pretend that his appointees are, by historical standards, qualified to hold their positions. Indeed, the only prerequisite is blind fealty.
I raise this issue after having read McWhorter’s recent essay titled “What A.I. and DEI have in common.” His argument is that AI casts a cloud of suspicion over students, causing professors, of whom McWhorter is one, to wonder whether their work is authentically theirs. He writes:
“A.I. will put artistic and intellectual achievement under a cloud of doubt, a sense that the creator did not do it all on their own, and possibly could not have. And this is the burden that D.E.I. policies often saddle its intended beneficiaries with. Call it diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action or racial preferences, it is rooted in a quest to give people an opportunity to compete more easily against straight white people, especially men.”
McWhorter doesn’t stop there, writing:
“Adjusting standards for admission or hiring in view of a group’s past handicap is a unique moral advance. But it should be applied for as limited a time as possible because of the side effects. Under a policy that allows certain people to be judged even partly on who they are rather than what they bring to the table, people of color are often suspected of being ‘D.E.I. hires,’ brought on with lesser qualifications than their white equivalent would be permitted to have.”
I have to point out the glaring logical flaw in this argument. McWhorter is so hyper-focused on policies that are intended to attenuate historical racial discrimination that he ignores the reality of contemporary discrimination against people of color.
And, more to the point, he ignores the unfair advantages that wealthy (most often white) people take advantage of without any concern whatsoever that they did not earn their privileges. Consider, for example, the scandal that erupted a few years ago when several elite schools were found to have admitted children of the wealthy and famous — children who would not otherwise have been admitted. The scandal included Stanford University, an alma mater that McWhorter and I have in common.
McWhorter also writes:
“D.E.I.’s good intentions come with the cost of a kind of benevolent overstep, which will inevitably leave onlookers skeptical of Black competence in general, as a mere five minutes on X can illustrate. Black college students often complain that their white and Asian peers assume they were admitted on the basis of affirmative action. And despite the Trumpian quest to eliminate D.E.I., my guess is that its basic imperatives, to even the playing field for people who aren’t white or male, are too ingrained in blue America’s DNA to fall completely by the wayside.”
Why should such efforts “fall completely by the wayside” given that the racism that gave rise to such efforts hasn’t done so? I am constantly astounded by how the concern about Black people being “qualified” does not extend to whites who benefited from power, proximity and privilege. If white people don’t feel guilty about taking advantage of such opportunities, why should Black people? Though, to be crystal clear, I am not arguing that DEI and affirmative action constitute discrimination against white people.
In effect, McWhorter, and countless others, are arguing that Black people are at fault for accepting corrective measures that were created to combat the racism that we still experience — nearly always from the people who oppose said corrective measures. This is a nonsensical tautology that inevitably results in aiding and abetting racial discrimination. It is pure fantasy to believe that centuries of racial discrimination will vanish when the policies that address said discrimination are dismantled.
I will never accept that the way to combat racial stereotypes is by giving in to those who perpetuate them.
Written by Larry Smith
