Race Pundits Spewing Crap

Two years ago, The Washington Post did a series of articles on Black Men. I referred to it as the Black Men series and I wrote about it here. The first article covered the results of a poll that was taken for the series. I wrote about it here. At this point, I'm going to provide something that caught my attention in the article that I referenced:

Six in 10 black men said their collective problems owe more to what they have failed to do themselves rather than "what white people have done to blacks." At the same time, half reported they have been treated unfairly by the police, and a clear majority said the economic system is stacked against them.

...

Three in four said they value being successful in a career, more than either white men or black women. Yet majorities also said that black men put too little emphasis on education and too much emphasis on sports and sex.

The poll surveyed 2,864 people and had a sample size of 1,328 Black men. If you believe in polls, those are interesting results, especially given the over sample of Black men. But what does this have to do with race pundits or crap being spewed?

[Obama's] victory demonstrates the main platform of my race writing. The guiding question in everything I have ever written on race is: Why do so many people exaggerate about racism?

...

In any case, to insist that we are hamstrung until every vestige of racism, bias, or inequity is gone indicates a grievous lack of confidence, which I hope any person of any history would reject.

I have been consistent is stating that certain pundits on race deliberately over state what is being said and over state the proportion of people stating it. I've stated before, and showed, where certain pundits, including John McWhorter, have written things that don't stand up to the light of scrutiny. I've also stated that it appears they are as bad as the public pundits they most often criticize and call race baiters.

I find it hard to believe that McWhorter has never read the Black Man series nor has never read the poll. And, again, I state that since McWhorter is a linguist, he knows exactly how "so many people" is going to be read. Yet, if you believe in polls and believe the poll represents the attitude of most Black men, then why does McWhorter not quantify "so many people"? My opinion is that he does not want to do so because, for some reason, he has a vested interest in continuing misinformation about race in the public sphere.

Comments

[MIB]

The more I think on it, the more I come to believe pundits actually believe what they write. In many ways, the McWhorters out here function as secular priests. One doesn't need facts to embrace or advance a belief; scientific discovery is immaterial. And so it is with the culture warriors.

So... while IMO McWhorter's clearly a hack, I think he's writing honestly from his perspective. His opinions are a traditional conceit of the Black bourgeois that happens to jibe very nicely with White, Establishment thinking.

[Nquest]

I was actually proud of McWhorter. For a while he had been able to go through a few Bloggingheads diavlogs with Glenn Loury without being a complete, shameless, worthless hack (he'd saved that for his columns). But then he just couldn't hold the hack back.