"I can attest that to speak as a black man often at odds with the stated consensus of his fellow blacks can be liberating."

"Just as often, however, race becomes a burdensome constraint on how one’s statements are received. For some, I will always be speaking, thinking, and acting 'as a black man.' The specter of race always threatens to impart an undue exemplarity to whatever I—or whatever any black people—say or do, as though the firing of every synapse in our brains could be traced back to a racial origin. In that sense, race is both qualifying and disqualifying—a reason to believe a speaker’s account of himself (for, of course, blacks are always 'authentic') and, at the same time, a reason to disbelieve it (for, of course, a black person would say that)...."

Writes Glenn Loury in "Clarence Thomas and Me/To speak as a black man at odds with the consensus of other blacks can be burdensome—and liberating." (City Journal)

The loyalty trap does not spring unexpectedly and maim you; it welcomes you in and fills you with the warmth of comradeship. That is what makes it so deadly: it feels good to be trapped....

"George Floyd was saying 'I can't breathe' when he was standing up straight and just being coaxed to get into the car."

"What they were trying to do was take him somewhere to get treatment, because the drugs were severely addling his mind and he wouldn't get in the car. And he starts saying, breathing air, standing up, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' when nobody is anywhere near his neck or anything else. George Floyd was extremely high on fentanyl and meth to an extent that could have killed him sitting in a chair. If you're on fentanyl in particular, you get something called 'wooden chest,' where you can't breathe if you've got that much in you. That's how high he was."

Said John McWhorter, in a discussion with with Glenn Loury, quoted at Loury's Substack, under the provocative title, "Derek Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd."

"You can't do affirmative action, maintain black dignity, and maintain the standards at the same time. That's a trilemma."

"You can't do all of those things at the same time. If you lower the standards for black people to admit them to elite venues of intellectual performance and the standards are correlated with performance, you assure as a statistical necessity, on average, lower performance of the blacks whom you've admitted. If you insist on their dignity, you can't be Sandra Sellers. This is the adjunct lecturer at Georgetown Law Center who was caught on an open mic lamenting the fact that most of the kids in her class who were at the bottom were black.... And the whole brouhaha, the whole navel-gazing conflagration that happened at the institution of Georgetown Law with a black faculty demand of the white faculty that they acknowledge their white supremacist, blah, blah, blah. It's all a cover for black mediocrity. Yes. There, I said it. You lowered the standards. Now the black kids are at the bottom, but they have to have dignity. Therefore, you immolate yourself morally.... [T]hey’re now going to search under every bed for racist white people."

 
Said Glenn Loury, talking with Bari Weiss on her podcast "Honestly" — which has a transcript, here. (I've changed the punctuation a bit.)

"Thinking Critically about Critical Race Theory."

Glenn Loury talks to Charles Murray about the "shift away from racism as a moral issue to accusations of racism as a kind of attack on [white people] as people."

Glenn Loury talks with John McWhorter about his adventure in Tucker Carlson land.

 

McWhorter didn't think Loury should dignify Carlson with his presence, but Loury thought he should go on the show — "Tucker Carlson Today" (paywalled here) — to reach Carlson's audience. He was wary that Carlson might try to use him as a tool but felt he could defend against that, and in the end Carlson was actually a good listener. Carlson interviewed him the way Oprah would, Loury says.

The conversation between McWhorter and Loury develops into a question I've been interested in for a long time. It's something I once asked and got vigorously shamed for even asking. "I can't believe you asked that question!," said the black female law professor, in a tone that seemed to say: I will not remain friends with —or even remain in the presence of — anyone who would ask that question. It happened in the 1990s, a time of Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Radical Feminism at my law school (Wisconsin).

I won't try to quote exactly how I phrased the question back then or do a transcript of what Loury and McWhorter say. This is my attempt to frame the question now: Doesn't the demand to think of everything in terms of race risk causing white people to think of themselves as a distinct interest group and to pursue their own interests? 

As Loury points out, white people are [going to remain] the largest racial group in the United States — [even if we slip below the majority to] 45%. Black people are only 13%. Hispanic people, maybe 17%. McWhorter states that the white people he knows don't think of themselves as a race and suggests that black people are better off not stimulating consciousness of whiteness.

If, under Critical Race Theory, white supremacy finds its way into every institution of American culture, then, by its own terms, our embrace of Critical Race Theory is — right now — reinforcing and advancing white privilege. How could it not? (If the theory is correct.)

Why did Glenn Loury refuse to sign that "Letter on Justice and Open Debate" published last week in Harper's?

From "The Weekend Interview with Glenn Loury: A Challenger of the Woke 'Company Policy'" (Wall Street Journal):

Mr. Loury says he "politely declined" an invitation to sign "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" published by Harper's on Tuesday. Endorsed by some 150 liberal academics and writers, it denounces President Trump as "a real threat to democracy" before criticizing leftist repression.

"I declined for two reasons," Mr. Loury says. "First, I'm not 'on the left' and felt no need to signal solidarity with the left before criticizing cancel culture. And second, I don't view Trump as the greatest threat to democracy in this country." The truth, he adds, is "quite the opposite. It has been the refusal of the left to accept the democratic outcome of 2016 which precipitated the intolerance about which [the signatories] were complaining. So I did not sign."

"Yes, racism is real, but as a crucial factor that enables or prevents social advancement, it has lost a lot of force in the past half century."

"I am sure that there are deep-seated inequality problems in America that affect everyone, and black people in particular. Some are institutional, but many have to do with the culture and behavior of black people themselves. I’m talking about lack of educational achievement, and about the higher crime rate; I’m talking about the collapse of the black family. Seven out of ten black children are born outside of marriage. It is a plausible surmise that households where a mother is present, but no father, are more likely to produce adolescent males with behavioral problems. People are frustrated that conventional political solutions, such as expanding anti-discrimination and welfare programs, have not worked. That’s why they take refuge in the empty thesis of racism. They speak of 1619, when the first blacks landed in America, and they speak of slavery, which was abolished more than 150 years ago. They talk of 'centuries of oppression.' But, they don’t talk about how the social condition of blacks in America well may have been healthier in 1950 than it is today—the integrity of family structure, the level of the crime rate, the relationship to work of the poorly educated, and the values with which many children are raised.... I think we do not live in a really free space where we can discuss these questions. Pressure to conform is intense because nobody wants to give the impression that they stand on the wrong side of the great moral questions of our time.... Because racists say that black crime is terrible, you are afraid even to address the issue and admit that it may be part of the problem.... So you’d rather be silent. And that gets us nowhere—or rather, it gets us to where we are today."

From says Glenn Loury in "Racism Is An Empty Thesis/An African-American professor says that blacks hold their fate in their own hands" (City Journal).

"Who cares what some paper-pushing apparatchik thinks? It’s all a bit creepy and unsettling."

"Why must this university’s senior administration declare, on behalf of the institution as a whole and with one voice, that they unanimously—without any subtle differences of emphasis or nuance—interpret contentious current events through a single lens? They write sentences such as this: 'We have been here before, and in fact have never left.' Really? This is nothing but propaganda. Is it supposed to be self-evident that every death of an 'unarmed black man' at the hands of a white person tells the same story? They speak of 'deep-rooted systems of oppression; legacies of hate.'...  Is it obvious that 'hate'—as opposed to incompetence, or fear, or cruelty, or poor training, or lack of accountability, or a brutal police culture, or panic, or malfeasance—is what we observed in Minneapolis? We are called upon to 'effect change.' Change from what to what, exactly? Evidently, we’re now all charged to promote the policy agenda of the 'progressive' wing of American politics.... This is no reasoned ethical reflection. Rather, it is indoctrination, virtue-signaling, and the transparent currying of favor with our charges...."

Writes Glenn Loury in "I Must Object/A rebuttal to Brown University’s letter on racism in the United States."

Gloria Steinem is still alive. Let's hear her speak for herself.

I'm reading Jeff Greenfield's piece in Politico, "How Roy Moore’s Misdeeds Are Forcing an Awakening on the Left/Years of excusing Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct suddenly seems morally indefensible":

There's no better illustration of how the ground has shifted than to look at Gloria Steinem’s 1998 New York Times op-ed piece, “Why Feminists Support Clinton.” Published as the Lewinsky story was on full boil, the piece talked not about that story, but about the charges of harassment leveled by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey [but not Juanita Broaddrick]....

“He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life” Steinem wrote of Willey. “She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again.” In her original story, Paula Jones essentially said the same thing. She went to then-Governor Clinton's hotel room, where she said he asked her to perform oral sex and even dropped his trousers. She refused, and even she claims that he said something like, ‘Well, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do.’’

“As with the allegations in Ms. Willey's case, Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection,” Steinem wrote by way of excusing him.... It was labeled the “one free grope” theory.

Politico doesn't give us a link for the Steinem piece, but I wanted to add one. I like to see the original text, not just excerpts. I went to the NYT to do a search and something really weird happened. When I typed in the search term "steinem" and added a space, my spelling (the correct spelling of the name) was accepted, but when, after that space, I added "clinton," the word "steinem" automatically corrected to "seinem" (and returned no results). I retested that over and over and it happened every time, at least as long as I stayed in my browser Safari. (It did not happen in Firefox.)

Anyway, I could not get the 1998 op-ed to turn up in the search of the archive. I got many letters to the editor responding to that op-ed, and I got a 2010 reprint — "March 22, 1998: Why Feminists Support Clinton, By Gloria Steinem" — which has the notation "The preceding was excerpted and adapted from a previously published Op-Ed article, for inclusion in a 40th-anniversary issue." Excerpts!

Greenfield continues:

At the height of the Lewinsky impeachment melodrama, Clinton’s defenders always argued that the president’s behavior was a private matter. To this day, you can find references to Clinton’s “dalliances” and “peccadilloes.”

Yes, NYT columnist Gail Collins and my Bloggingheads interlocutor Glenn Loury used the word "peccadilloes" to try to insulate Bill Clinton, as I discussed in a May 2016 post titled "Why does NYT columnist Gail Collins call Bill Clinton's sexual misdeeds 'private peccadilloes'?"

Collins had written "The sex scandal issue isn’t really central, since Americans have a long record of voting for the candidates they think can deliver, regardless of private peccadilloes." I said:

The phrase "the personal is political" means something important in the fight for women's equality. No one who cares about that fight should call the accusations against Bill Clinton "private peccadilloes." A "peccadillo" is: "A minor fault or sin; a trivial offence."...

Private peccadillo. Really, Gail Collins, what do you think the young women of today — women who know sexual harassment and sexual assault are extremely serious — are going to think of your using that word peccadillo?

I added a clip from I discussion I'd had with Glenn Loury in January 2016 about the same use of the word "peccadillo," and I'm going to embed it one more time because I think it improves with age (even the part where the software causes my words to be completely silenced when Loury overtalks and even the crazily distorted skin tone (flaming red)):



If there is one word that revives my anger on this subject, it's "peccadilloes." That's all I'm going to say now, because I've said the same thing so many times, but I just want to underscore what I wrote in the post title.

Gloria Steinem still lives and breathes, as far as I know. She's getting knocked around for what she said (and the harm that she did) 19 years ago. She should step up and speak for herself now.

Should a Jew feel responsible for the bad behavior of other Jews — like Harvey Weinstein, Leon Wieseltier, and Anthony Weiner?

Harold Pollack (of University of Chicago and The Century Foundation) says he feels responsible (and questions Glenn Loury about whether he feels responsible for the bad behavior of other people in his group):



At one point, Loury suggests that Jews should feel some pride in what Harvey Weinstein did because it shows that they're not all nerds!

Pollack responds that he "would take more pride" if Weinstein were "a swaggering playboy."

Yikes.

John McWhorter goes on an epic tirade against Ta-Nehisi Coates (and the white people who make a show of embracing him).

This is really something:

I resist Glenn Loury's label for — me — "contrarian," explain why, and offer an alternative label, which he then readily slaps on himself.

The label is...

Glenn Loury and I resist the resistance to Trump.

In this hot new episode of Bloggingheads (recorded on Friday), Glenn Loury objects strenuously to the effort to treat Trump as abnormal, and I agree. Despite that basic agreement, we find a lot to talk about:



The tags indicate the range of subject matter. The topics listed at the BHTV website are:

The “normalizing Trump” debate
Trump’s desire to keep judges “in check”
Political posturing around Gorsuch and Garland
Should judges infer that Trump wants a Muslim ban?
Glenn defends the Shelby County ruling on voting rights
Ann defends Citizen’s United

"I take no pleasure in saying this, but the fact is — there is no excuse for us black voters to remain in such a supine and infantilized state..."

"... that a Republican controlled legislature in, say, NC can neuter the effect of black citizens merely by asking them to present an ID card. Frankly, I find that entire argument to be patronizing in the extreme. How is it that the uneducated, opiate-addicted and under-employed white voters who came out in droves for Trump at his rallies and later in the voting booth, and who thereby made him our next president — how is it that such 'deplorables' are able to pull the lever, but their black counterparts need a federal court in order to have their constitutional rights validated?"

Writes Glenn Loury.

He's reacting to a petition "demanding that Congress nullify the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder — the case which struck down section iv(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965." That's his characterization of the petition.

"Black Lives Matter — really! In my hometown, Chicago, they are being extirpated at an alarming rate."

"The discourse about race, violence, and the value of human life has been held hostage to partisanship — Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter. We can do better than that. The election is over. And, the body count mounts. I'm interested now in SOLUTIONS and, frankly, I don't give a damn where they come from. Obama ignored this catastrophe unfolding in his adopted home town for nearly a decade. At the moment, I'm inclined to #GiveTrumpAChance to 'fix it.' Anybody with a better idea? Speak now."

Writes Glenn Loury, linking to "Chicago tops 700 homicides — with a month to go in violent 2016."

A heated conversation between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter about Donald Trump.

I was going to make a shorter clip, but this just takes off and keeps going. It's a fascinating emotional dynamic, because Loury gets very emotional about how the Trump haters need to calm down and move on and McWhorter stays super-calm justifying the emotional reaction resisting Trump as President.



Glenn Loury talked with me last January about the Trump phenomenon and was sympathetic enough toward Trump that I pressed him about whether he might be a closet Trump supporter. He said "I'm excited and amused by the possibility," but then made it very clear in the comments to my post: "I AM NOT A (CLOSETED) DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER!!"

ADDED: Okay, here's a very sharp clip, just a few seconds:



"And whether this man is a sexual predator? Come on. That's hyperbolic language that I think... was not even well-suited for the campaign. It lost Hillary Clinton the campaign. People decided they weren't going to be led around by the nose by a bunch of moralizing hypocrites, who sneer and throw labels around. They decided to vote for what they took to be their interests."

"I find it to be ironic that it has taken Donald J. Trump to bring to the fore the obvious conflict of interest that exists between..."

"... low-skilled American workers (of whatever ethnicity), on the one hand, and low-skilled foreign workers who wish to enter or remain in the United States, on the other. Isn't it interesting that his detractors NEVER EVEN ENGAGE THIS QUESTION? But, the question is fundamental for anyone concerned to improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged Americans. That's why I'm sharing this piece, from George Borjas — the Harvard economist who, perhaps more than anyone else, has been producing and analyzing data that bear directly on this issue. No, he's not a 'racist' for looking into this question. And neither am I, for taking what he has to say seriously. Indeed, those who would dismiss — or, worse, suppress — a candid examination of the consequences for poor domestic workers of having large numbers of low-skilled immigrants are the ones whose social ethics should be called into question."

Writes Glenn Loury, commenting on this Politico article, "Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers/The candidates tell drastically different stories about immigration. They’re both skipping half the truth."

"You're not supposed to give any credit to Trump, he's supposed to be crazy, but..."

ADDED: Here's the post back in January where I prod Glenn Loury with the suggestion that he is, secretly, a Trump supporter.

"Let's stay on the Democratic Party plantation, recommends Donna Brazile..."

Writes Glenn Loury.

Unfortunately, Ms. Brazile -- the veteran Democratic strategist, who personifies the enduring legacy within the Party of Jesse Jackson's presidential aspirations from the 1980s -- makes no reference in her piece to the substantive policy issues -- jobs and education -- where her party's establishment has repeatedly failed to foster the interests of poor urban blacks....

By sweeping such difficult issues under the rug, Ms. Brazile misses the key point: it's a "Negotiation 101"-level observation to note that a credible threat to withhold our votes from the Democrats gives black people more leverage WITHIN the party, as it endeavors to manage what are the necessarily conflicting interests of its varied constituencies...

This commonsense observation is not a plug for Donald Trump (though Democratic party leaders will hope blacks construe it that way, the better to avoid accountability and to silence dissenting voices like my own...)....