Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

a book by John McWhorter

(our site's book review)

The Amazon blurb says that New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.

Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told to read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is “appropriation.” We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we’ll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labeled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion—and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.

In Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of “white privilege” and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the “woke mob.” He shows how this religion that claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called “antiracism,” but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.

Fortunately for Black America, and for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, Black America.

"This is a passionate, often fiery book, but it is also seriously considered and scrupulously reasoned. Whether or not readers are persuaded by McWhorter’s analysis, they must, in the name of intellectual honesty, consider the book mandatory reading."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"McWhorter brings us much-needed pointed social commentarywith humor and grace. Give this book to those who are questioning the new religion, even those who have found it. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America has the capacity to melt the hatred and fervor that is now all the rage, and to bring love and forgiveness, logic and discourse, back into fashion.”—Heather E. Heying, evolutionary biologist and coauthor of A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century

“Scathingly brilliant and strawman-killing from the get-go, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America will make you stop in your tracks no matter what your politics are—and very possibly reexamine some of your deepest held convictions. Masterfully and beautifully written, this book is a powerful appeal for common sense.”—Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes “Honest commentary about racial controversies is rare, and John McWhorter is a writer who can be counted on to provide it. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America is a heartfelt evisceration of the sloppy thinking that forms the foundation of so much social justice activism today. It’s an essential contribution to our national discussion about racial inequality, and McWhorter’s willingness to put unvarnished truth above politically correct niceties deserves our gratitude.”—Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of Maverick

'‘This book frankly leapt out of me,” writes John McWhorter, “during the summer of 2020.” The country was convulsed not just with Covid-19, but with protests in response to the killing of an unarmed black man by a white policeman whose actions were caught on camera. Mr. McWhorter began to write in the first week of August. Eight weeks later, he’d finished “Woke Racism,” a book that hits back at the “antiracists” who prowl public life in search of transgression, and whose mission to rid America of “racist” thought he likens to that of a religious cult. His book is a cry from the heart, and readers should gauge the depth of his indignation from the fact that its working title was “F*** ’Em.” This eloquent manifesto is Mr. McWhorter’s 22nd book, a majority of those on the subject of linguistics. His is a split personality: A linguist in his day job as a professor at Columbia University (specializing in creoles, particularly the Saramaccan language in Suriname), he’s also an outspoken commentator on race whenever the national mood requires it. As Mr. McWhorter’s thinking on race is in conflict with that of the black American political mainstream, he’s often miscast as a black conservative by glib taxonomists. But he’s careful to point out that he wasn’t “thinking of right-wing America as my audience,” even as he acknowledges that many liberal readers will think him “traitorous” for writing this book. " (Source: Book Review: ‘Woke Racism’ by John McWhorter, Tunku Varadarajan ) John H. McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University. He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and host of the language podcast Lexicon Valley. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Daily Beast, New Republic, The Root, and many other venues.McWhorter is the author of over twenty books, including Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter—Then, Now and Forever, The Power of Babel, Losing the Race,and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.

"In his 2021 book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, McWhorter expands upon these viewpoints and argues that "third wave anti-racism" is a religion he terms "Electism" with white privilege as original sin. McWhorter likens the books White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist and Between the World and Me to sacred religious texts. He argues that this hypothesized status as a religion explains the behavior of its adherents, whom he calls "the Elect". He advises that since the faith, being a faith, is not open to discussion, arguments with its adherents should be avoided in favor of pragmatic action against racism. McWhorter advocates three programs: ending the war on drugs, teaching reading by phonics to children lacking books at home, and free vocational education, promoting the idea that not everyone needs a four-year college education to succeed.

"McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New York Sun, The New Yorker, The Root, The Daily Beast, and CNN. He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and, after writing op-eds for The New York Times for several years, became an Opinion columnist there in 2021. He hosts the Lexicon Valley podcast — for Slate from 2016 to 2021, and currently for Booksmart Studios. He was contributing editor at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014." (Source: John McWhorter, Wkipedia)

As McWhorter sees it in his Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, "All of these [canceling/censoring/virtue signaling/'antiracist'] cases occurred because of the influence of a frame of mind we could term Third Wave Antiracism, a movement whose adherents are more often termed “social justice warriors” or “the woke mob.”

Woke culture is the biggest insult to our society—especially black people—since the founding of our nation "One can divide antiracism into three waves along the lines that feminism has been. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and legalized segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 80s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist is a moral flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s teaches that because racism is baked into the structure of society, whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct. Under this paradigm, all deemed insufficiently aware of this sense of existing while white as eternal culpability require bitter condemnation and ostracization, to an obsessive, abstract degree that . . . leaves millions of innocent people scared to pieces of winding up in the sights of a zealous brand of inquisition that seems to hover over almost any statement, ambition, or achievement in modern society. So one might ask why I seem to consider it such an issue that some food columnist, some nursing school dean, and some data analyst have had their lives derailed by this movement. . . . No one can know just when or how Third Wave Antiracist proselytizing may blindside them while they are going about their business."

In wokeism, Whites' having white skin condemns them as racists; while blacks—all victims—are so oppressed by having to live around these racists that no standards of conduct or achievement should apply to them—they should be able to do as they please without consequence, which explains 2023 in a nutshell

The dirty little secret about antiracism is that it is a lite version of preparing for American Marxism. The crazies running the everything-is-racist scam do not care about freedom, nor do they care about rights. The liberal elites do not care about your property and bank accounts. They only care about THEIR property and bank accounts. They plan to be in charge when the democracy drowns in antiracism and chokes on equity and the Constitution gets burned up by some NSA flunkey.

The liberal elite plan to be in charge when the democracy drowns in antiracism and equity and the Constitution gets burned up by some NSA flunkey

What will replace the Constitution? Some antiracist propaganda full of ignorant foolishness on the level of The 1619 Project and various woke threatises like critical race theory. See 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project.

Radical leftists, a.k.a. Marxists, plan on burning the Constitution since it is nothing but hateful, white supremacy propaganda, replacing it with the 1619 Project