/A reply to John McWhorter’s unfounded insinuations./
In Plato’s legendary tome, Republic, Thrasymachus, responding to Socrates’ question as to whether or not he feels justice is a vice, emphatically asserts: “No, just very high minded simplicity.” Republic was written way back in 375 BC, but unfortunately “high minded simplicity” is alive and well in the intellectually ignominious year of 2020.
In the Nov 16^th issue of its always intriguing IDEAS section, The Atlantic published an essay written by one of Columbia University’s astute professors, John McWhorter. The piece, titled: The Black People Who Voted for Trump Know He’s Racist, has a subtitle that declares: “/Trump’s nonwhite support suggests a gulf between how the “woke” left processes racism and how many people in the real world do/.”
McWhorter, from what I have read and heard, seems to be a superb linguist and an intelligent and somewhat unapologetic contrarian. I use the adjective /somewhat/ because when I juxtapose his rhetoric with his coterie of fellow thinkers (Glen Loury, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams and the pedant Thomas Sowell) McWhorter (and Williams) do not appear to be as intransigent. That said, his latest Atlantic piece reads to me like a puerile egocentric manifesto for high school lunchroom hierarchy.
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