A far-reaching, full-throated polemic against “Third Wave Antiracism.”
McWhorter, a professor of linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia, has been a prominent figure in the public discourse around race since he published Losing the Race in 2000. But nothing he has said or written previously has been as controversial as the thesis he advances in his latest book. Flying in the face of mainstream liberal orthodoxy, McWhorter writes in unapologetic opposition to the brand of anti-racism that authors like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo have made so popular in recent years. At the core of McWhorter’s critique is his claim that wokism (or “Electism,” as he wants us to call it) has literally become a religion. It demands adherence to positions that one must accept on faith or else be treated as heretical (i.e., “problematic”). McWhorter is well aware that his arguments may be dismissed out of hand, but he is cogent and forthright in his discussions. “You see Third Wave antiracism telling you that you are morally bound to conceive of ordinary statements that once were thought of as progressive, like ‘I don’t see color,’ as racist,” he writes. “That if you are white you are to despise yourself as tainted permanently by ‘white privilege’ in everything you do.” The author attempts to turn from the vogue anti-racism of our era to earlier forms of anti-racism that don’t “make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species, and teach black people to revel in that status and cherish it as making us special.” This is a passionate, often fiery book, but it is also seriously considered and scrupulously reasoned. Whether or not readers are persuaded by McWhorter’s analysis, they must, in the name of intellectual honesty, consider the book mandatory reading.
McWhorter’s cri de coeur is a vital statement in America’s ongoing conversations about race.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-42306-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Categories: CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICS | ETHNICITY & RACE | INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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Everyone’s favorite avuncular socialist sends up a rousing call to remake the American way of doing business.
“In the twenty-first century we can end the vicious dog-eat-dog economy in which the vast majority struggle to survive,” writes Sanders, “while a handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.” With that statement, the author updates an argument as old as Marx and Proudhon. In a nice play on words, he condemns “the uber-capitalist system under which we live,” showing how it benefits only the slimmest slice of the few while imposing undue burdens on everyone else. Along the way, Sanders notes that resentment over this inequality was powerful fuel for the disastrous Trump administration, since the Democratic Party thoughtlessly largely abandoned underprivileged voters in favor of “wealthy campaign contributors and the ‘beautiful people.’ ” The author looks squarely at Jeff Bezos, whose company “paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.” Indeed, writes Sanders, “Bezos is the embodiment of the extreme corporate greed that shapes our times.” Aside from a few passages putting a face to avarice, Sanders lays forth a well-reasoned platform of programs to retool the American economy for greater equity, including investment in education and taking seriously a progressive (in all senses) corporate and personal taxation system to make the rich pay their fair share. In the end, he urges, “We must stop being afraid to call out capitalism and demand fundamental change to a corrupt and rigged system.” One wonders if this firebrand of a manifesto is the opening gambit in still another Sanders run for the presidency. If it is, well, the plutocrats might want to take cover for the duration.
Even if they're pie-in-the-sky exercises, Sanders’ pitched arguments bear consideration by nonbillionaires.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593238714
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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SEEN & HEARD
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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