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People of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race gone so crazy?
Bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting black communities and weakening the social fabric.
We're told to read books and listen to music by people of colour 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, labelled 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, 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 fervour 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 all of us, it's not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogramme friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, black people.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
• John McWhorter is one of America’s most famous black liberal intellectuals – a professor of linguistics at Columbia, and a columnist for the New York Times
• Woke Racism argues that ‘anti-racism’ as currently conceived is in fact both racist, and harmful to the very communities it claims to be trying to help
• Woke Racism was an immediate New York Times bestseller on publication in the US
• It has already sold 1,000 HB copies (TCM) on import in the UK, in six weeks, so there is proven demand for a UK publication
• Publicity will be significant - the success of the book has been a news story in the Sunday Times, and a review there is confirmed; while John is already lined up for a BBC Radio 4 appearance around the time of the book's publication in February
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