A Response to John McWhorter’s New York Times Op-Ed —

Oh to live in ignorance and power, and to have unfettered access to the New York Times Opinion Section to spout whatever garbage you think is correct, because the New York Times has validated you by giving you a byline.

What a horrifying thing to read in response to the genocide of Palestinians:

“Did this focus on performance bear fruit? Here’s something: name some significant civil rights victories between 1968 and the election of Barack Obama. It’s a lot harder than naming the victories until that point.” Sure, John, if you only ever center yourself and your life experience. Then yes, I’m sure it’s very hard for you.

Only a man comfortable in his position at an Ivy would dare to write something so abjectly horrific. Because when he says “civil rights” he does not mean “civil rights”, he means Black people. That’s why he picked 1968 and Obama.

This man forgot that the Voting Rights Act was amended several times between those points. Those are civil rights. The voting age was changed to the age of majority, civil rights for those between the ages of 18–20. Non-English speakers were protected at the booth, civil rights for immigrants. In 1974, a major civil rights motion passed with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, where women could have their own money without being attached to a spouse–because even though it was made legal in the 60s, banks still had discriminatory practices.

Because when you discriminate against a civilian population, it becomes a civil rights issue. Because that is what civil rights means, literally. Rights for civilians. Or have ‘civil rights’ become so conflated with the racialized American experience he forgot the meanings of words? He is an Ivy League professor of linguistics. He especially should know what words mean. I would expect the critical thinking to be much, much better.

I’m just gonna keep going with the major civil rights victories since I’m here.

The introduction of Title IX is civil rights.

Roe v Wade was civil rights.

Goss vs Lopez (1975) was civil rights–this is when we determined students are entitled to due process.

Flag burning was enshrined as protected speech. Civil rights.

You cannot refuse to hire women because they have young children. Civil rights.

You cannot exclude women from juries. Civil rights.

Discrimination based on sex stereotyping (we might call this gender performance now) is illegal. Civil rights. This one’s from the 80s.

Sexual harassment of the same gender is still sexual harassment. Yes, this is a thing the Supreme Court really ruled on. In 1998.

The right to privacy for conduct in consenting adults’ bedrooms was also civil rights.

There are literally hundreds of these because civil rights did not pause in 1968 and civil rights does not only mean one population of people. It’s not hard to find them or know them, unless you are specifically trying to discredit a modern movement. Civil rights means rights of every American civilian.

The students’ protests of the genocide of Palestinians is not performance. There are specific demands. John McWhorter is just an annoyed professor who wants those damn kids off his lawn. It does not matter to him. He still spouted the “Israel has a right to defend itself” which those of us with the context of the Nakba know is an obfuscation, trying to sandwich it in between the platitudes that he really does agree in principle. He spouts the ‘visible destruction of property’ as if that is a thing that matters at all when discussing people dying and his employers helping to fund that death.

He even admits that it was initially effective in his mind. But he (read: Columbia) is tired of it now, so you must finish. Even uses the phrase ‘old news’ to describe it as if police aren’t still destroying camps and arresting students as I write this.

But this is a from man who wrote a book called “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America”. Where the descriptions, which I am pulling directly from the Penguin Random House page on the book, say such like:

“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…antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion — and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.

In Woke Racism, 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.”

If someone told me this man was friends with Candace Owens, I would nod and go “of course”. This is also a man who said out loud that the bedrock of racial identity is feeling oppressed, and that people are proud to be oppressed. Because, you know, it’s aspirational, and just a feeling and not something that can be measured. Oh wait.

This is also a man who’s boasting his upcoming work as “Pronoun Trouble” so, you know, a real winner who clearly cares about people.

Anyway. Free Palestine. And the New York Times can shove it. I will never think about this man again after I hit publish on this. In the words of a different man, Aaron Bushnell:

“Free Palestine. Free Palestine. FREE PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE. FREE PALESTINE.”