By Christopher Viscuso
Columbia University scholar of Linguistics, John McWhorter, was recently featured on MSNBC commentator, Chris Hayes’ podcast, Why is This Happening? to discuss freedom of speech and to debate its boundaries. The pair begin by conceding that “freedom of speech” is more an ideal than a rigid principle. Whether through etiquette or the evolution of debate, some topics are either beyond the pale of polite conversation or are settled matters. McWhorter uses genocide and women’s suffrage, respectively, as examples in this regard.
But the conversation quickly polarizes around the degree to which speech is currently being limited. McWhorter argues that this is mainly being carried out “by a certain contingent of people,” across the academic, political, and popular spectrum, effectively circumscribing discourse to such an extent that “it’s beginning to choke out what most societies would consider any kind of sensible, or thriving, artistic, moral, or intellectual culture.” Hayes then attempts to shore up the conversation with nuance by organizing the debate into a bifurcated set of categories: delimitations of who or what is welcome to be discussed in written media or college campuses on the one hand; and “should someone face employment sanction for a Facebook post” on the other. Conceding initially, McWhorter then reverts to hysterics, which characterize a great deal of his contribution to this discussion, claiming vaguely that American society is being “told by a certain cadre of these people” that this supposed expansion of “that which we may not say” is being instituted by a rule of fear. “This truly frightening kind of cultural development,” claims McWhorter, enforces a sort of conformity across American society and culture, supposedly coercing the lion’s share of the American public through the fear of being called “racist” on Twitter.
In his more eccentric moments, McWhorter analogizes this situation he sees sweeping the nation to the “Great Terror” following the French Revolution. (To be fair, McWhorter does catch himself several times in this regard. But it happens too often to be incidental.) Without a certain degree of context, you’d think McWhorter was referring to the Red Scare under the McCarthyites or the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s. Instead, in lieu of any hard data suggesting that so-called “Cancel Culture” has manifested into some totalitarian tyranny reminiscent of Nazi book-burnings, McWhorter, like many of his reactionary compatriots, resorts to a (small) series of the most miniscule of anecdotes to make his point. For example, he points to a rather obscure case from the University of Illinois, Chicago, Law School, wherein Professor Jason Kilborn was suspended, McWhorter claims, for an exam question that included a heavily redacted use of a racial slur. While the Black Law Student Association (BLSA) of the University indeed submitted a petition to Dean Darby Dickerson and Chancellor Michael Amiridis regarding the redacted word’s inclusion on the exam, Kilborn was in fact suspended for comments made in jest in a Zoom meeting with a member of the BLSA about the petition. Kilborn stated “I suspect she’s afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me in that letter I would become homicidal.”
McWhorter’s other examples are equally singular, with little to no context provided to substantiate his claim that this is somehow a “truly frightening kind of cultural development,” as part of “this racial reckoning,” seizing the nation.
Now, I do agree that activists’ efforts against entrenched, structural racism could be put to better use elsewhere to alleviate its material outcomes. And I certainly agree that in many cases, such as that demonstrated by McWhorter here, the more rarefied, toxic forms that so-called “Cancel Culture” may take can be ceased upon by reactionary, fearmongering commentators to project anti-racism as a dangerous behemoth destroying the country to retain their own control over the culture. I certainly do not agree that the material conditions that racism produces can be separated from the racist attitudes of individuals that allow its structural forms to persist. Hayes, to his credit, makes this point to McWhorter during the discussion, though McWhorter responds, rather condescendingly, by claiming that African Americans, presumably African American intellectuals, are just now beginning to expect a level of historical literacy of their white interlocuters. Which leads us to the crux of my frustration with McWhorter.
Never minding his argument that the expectation of a basic literacy of racism in this country is somehow tantamount to a national “reeducation program,” McWhorter’s Trumpian detraction of Critical Race Theory (CTR) is perhaps even more disconcerting than his commentary on speech and so-called “Cancel Culture.” And, like Trump, his attacks seem to be based on a misunderstanding of what the term even means. To McWhorter, prior to the protests that erupted around the killing of George Floyd in the Summer of 2020, CRT had been a “fringe school of thought” within academia whose “proponents” seized the “opportunity” of the protests to project their agenda. This is a level of alarmism unbecoming of an Ivy League scholar. And it’s incorrect.
CTR is, as it has always been, an analytical tool used to observe the power dynamics within race relations between different groups. Though its original iteration applied specifically to law, its application has spread across a range of academic disciplines, including, but not limited to, Criminal Justice, History, and Sociology. Its fundamental premises are (1) race is not a natural, biologically meaningful feature of physiologically distinct human subgroups; (2) race is therefore a socially constructed category historically and contemporarily utilized for the oppression and subordination of people of color; (3) racism is thus endemic to American culture and society, and a common experience among people of color; (4) the racial hierarchy upheld by American culture and society is typically unaffected, or reenforced, by attempts to improve the legal status of subordinated and oppressed peoples; (5) following the thesis of intersectionality, no one individual of color may be sufficiently identified by their membership in any one subgroup; and (6) the sufferers of oppression constitute uniquely situated communicators of the effects of their oppression, whether in a court of law or otherwise.
Beyond a commitment to challenging racism and discrimination within the law and other economic and social structures, CRT holds no ideologically partisan allegiances; the application of CRT in scholarship may lead to left- or right-wing conclusions, depending on the orientation of the scholar. However, detractors of CRT typically come from the right end of the spectrum. (McWhorter does not self-identify as a conservative, though he has worked as a Senior Fellow at the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, since 2003.) Despite myriad Orwellian attempts to prohibit or delegitimize it, CRT has provided a theoretical framework for countless scholars across academia for several decades now. And, to the chagrin of McWhorter and others, it will remain a persistent tool against racial oppression for the foreseeable future.
