We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage – Bari Weiss, Commentary Magazine
Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an anti-racist. There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as not racist.
Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism.
What we call cancel culture is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next.
It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.
Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.
I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith. That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way.
Please read this piece by Bari Weiss. It’s better than anything I could say. It’s inspiring.
We have what looks like another bout of this awful woke business coming up in the law school under the flag of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, but it’s basically CRT and it don’t look too good. All I can say is, that’s fine, or at least our sagacious President and his appointees seem determined to carry forward with their plan. It appears to involve, or may involve various proposed attempts to induct us professors into the cult of woke. They’re welcome to try, though I wish they would not, but I’m not going to say that I believe anything I don’t believe, or call anything by other than its proper name, or defame the history of my country, which is bad enough without making up lies about it. I’m not going to say I’m for anything that I’m not for. If I am required to sit in a room and listen to bullshit for some period of time in order to earn my salary, I guess I shall. We do unpleasant things for money sometimes. But there’s a difference between unpleasant and wrong. So I won’t say I believe any rubbish I don’t, or say I’ll try to practice it, because I won’t. I’m not going to sign anything that says more than — yeah, I listened; can I go now? Who knows, maybe it won’t be all rubbish, but frankly, it looks like it probably will be.