Making Sense #217, with Michael McWhorter (Also a word on #216)

The Sam Harris podcast with Michael McWhorter, covers a lot of old ground, but still there are four interesting points brought up:

1: Michael says the one thing we have to do to stop evangelical anti-racists from bullying you for not being as "woke" as them is to "punch them in the nose." Metaphotically. Like they were just some shark trying to bite you in the ocean. In other words, just tell them “no, I am not a racist, even though I disagree with you,” and move on. They might still try to take a bite or two out of you, but just stand firm, keep your spine stiff and your back straight and don’t let them think they are getting a concession out of you. And don’t try to argue with them because you can’t reason with a zealot.

2: The new religion of antiracism depends upon Black people exalting race as the central dominant thing about their identity. In my book, that makes them racists.

3: The anti-racist sector is so committed to their religion that they will lash themselves to it and go down with the ship of this country rather than make any concessions. So they don't share the goal of many of us of defeating Trump in November. Just as, in 1994, they celebrated the "not guilty" verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, even though they all knew he was guilty, and that the verdict meant turning an obvious murderer loose on society.

4: We need to stop allowing people to claim that every difference between black and white people currently in our country is the direct result of active racism. Every time a black guy doesn’t get a job, every time a black girl doesn’t get in a college, every time a black criminal is killed resisting arrest, it means racism to them. And of course, since they know that nothing bad can happen to a black person without it being a white person's fault, that means they are all--you guessed it--racists (my words, not Sam's of Michael's).

BRIEF NOTE ON #216 WITH GRAEME WOOD
The previous podcast covered a lot of the same themes as #217, and also re-capped themes Sam has espoused earlier. There wasn't much in the way of new information given out in the podcast, and I don't have much to say about it. One recurring theme that crops up again here is that the media jumped all over the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and made him out to be a racist and who-know-what-else, but none of those conclusions are supported by known facts. In other words, this just looks like another woke leftist's rush to judgment.