I’m the hugest fan of your work and writing; I’m so grateful for this perspective during this extremely confusing era of ours.
I would love it if you were able to research and write about the way education is failing poor kids and kids of color due to allowing different standards for different types of kids. The APM reports about phonics and public schools is so enlightening and an example of good intentions doing real harm. I abhor racism and I can see how well intentioned progressives are unintentionally creating racist systems in education.
Has anyone looked into, in cases like these and others, need to belong?
I had a (white, vaguely agnostic, middle-aged) professor who claimed she had no culture -- really what it was is she was a member of the dominant culture and didn't feel connected to anything because of it.
As a Jew, I may not spend a lot of time involved in my community, but I feel connected that community. I have my family over for Sabbath dinner Fridays. I text with my rabbi and call him by his first name when we're in informal settings. I have a place where I fit in and people who will count me as part of their circles simply because I'm Jewish; if we have nothing else identifiable in common, it's an invitation to the table (usually literally).
But when a bunch of white, vaguely Christian or agnostic people get together in public and celebrate who they are, that feels a lot like a white supremacist rally, and people who are craving community might be willing to try to pass as part of a community they don't naturally belong to rather than try to be part of what seems to them a dangerous, or at least undesirable, group of people "like them."
What does it say about America, and what does it say about academia? In our current political and intellectual climate, and especially in certain fields, an academic who suggests to her students that the conditions of life for African Americans has improved since, say, the 1950s is likely to be reported for bias. This is not an exaggeration. Even pointing out that there are many ways for scholars to measure legal, social, political, and economic well being; that we use such measures and criteria to assess the well-being of a wide range of groups around the world; and that these measures are crucial for understanding how to improve the well-being of disfavored and underrepresented groups isn't likely to deter students from calling for such a professor to be punished. I'm interested in what this phenomenon of white women academics masquerading as black tells us about current politics, including but not exclusively racial politics. But don't miss the part of this essay that addresses what can and cannot be spoken in college classrooms.
Elizabeth Warren is even more easily explained. People have long wanted to be seen as having Native American blood, not because they thought it would further their careers but because they thought it was cool. I can't tell you the number of white people growing up that proudly claimed they had Native American blood from a rumored story their family told to them. I haven't caught up with these folks but I wonder what their DNA tests have showed?
Correct. As someone who does genealogy for a hobby, I see this all the time. People will say "our family has a little Cherokee blood". ( It is almost always Cherokee, or Choctaw, because they were considered "civilized". It is never Apache or Sioux) As I research their family, sure enough there is NEVER any native blood. I am not exaggerating, I have never found once trace of native blood in all the clients I have had. Funnily enough, I did find one native ancestor in my own, that we did not even know we had.
It was extremely rare for natives to marry outside their group. And when it did happen, it happened in places like Oklahoma and New Mexico, far more than Georgia and Illinois.
Having native blood is considered "cool". THAT is what drives all of that, including in Elizabeth Warren's family. I am sure they did tell her that. I hear it all the time.
The presumption has been that a little (not too much) "Indian blood" makes a white descendant more American. We didn't "steal" the land; we inherited it.
From Thomas Jefferson to Indian Nations, 10 January 1809
My Children Chiefs of the Wiandots, Ottawas, Chippeways, Poutewatamies & Shawanese. Jan. 10. 1809.
"...in time you will be as we are; you will become one people with us; your blood will mix with ours; & will spread, with ours, over this great Island."
Thanks for another brilliant essay. I love your work and would think it needs no defense, but a few readers are missing crucial points. You say:
“one can situate individuals along a path that ends with Dolezal and Krug. Stage One … [begins] with the music ... dance, dress, movement, speech style, even “attitude,” and ... dating partners.”
This explains the puzzle; “why only 2, not 2,000 or 2 million?” The two are the end of the spectrum, just like the 140 mph fire tornado in Southern California was a one-of-a-kind extreme caused by the fire-suppression that affects all our wildfires here in the West.
As to the complaint, “Don't tell me to be outraged at Dolezal and Krug as long as blacks and their liberal fellow travelers…,” I most enjoyed that you were understanding of those caught in the wokeness delusion:
“Just as Dolezal and Krug were wrongly deemed crazy … there is a little bit of Dolezal and Krug in quite a few black people. The reasons are understandable … However, they require us to avoid the infantilizing treatment that the gurus of antiracist enlightenment insist upon.”
Yes, “Dolezal and Krug are bellwethers of a sort” — canaries in the coal mine — who can serve to alert us to a much larger danger. I had been hoping for someone to explain this, and no one could have done a better job of it.
Context: I signed on to Persuasion on the first day and I have seen every Bloggingheads interview with John and Glenn going back several years. They have essentially transformed how I think about race in America.
One of their biggest complaints is the thin data backing up critical studies and the causes of racial disparity.
And this is why I can't let John slide on this one, as much as I admire his work. The measure of a problem is how pervasive it is. N=2 is not pervasive in a country of 320 million people.
Moreover, using two worst-case scenarios to define a situation is how propagandists and racists perpetuate their evil ideologies. It's not even close to the nuanced thought that John, his peers and the readers of Persuasion are looking for.
Tom, I have a graduate-level background in stats, so I agree completely with your general point about the misuse of thin data. It's a real problem that frequently drives me nuts. But McWhorter's intuition actually follows a legitimate stat argument.
Example: In WWII ~20 million bombs were dropped with explosive power between 0 and 5 tons TNT, but in the last week two bombs with 15,000 tons TNT power were observed. Those two data points are more than 1,000 standard deviations above the mean.
Argument: There’s basically zero chance of that. UNLESS they are drawn from a different population. So with just those 2 points, we can conclude with almost perfect statistical certainty that they came from a different technological era that arrived at the end of the war — even if we know nothing else about that era.
That’s exactly how McWhorter structures his argument. He says Dolezal & Krug are sooooo different than past black wannabes (bombs) that they could not have happened in the previous (1960’s era) of racial prejudice. Therefore, just like two A-bombs prove we are in a new technological era just because they are sooooo different, D and K prove that we are in a new era of race discrimination.
I find his case for “sooooo different” convincing because (1) racism was really, really ugly back then, and (2) these two do not look at all like the self-sacrificing type that would have put up with that. You can say he’s wrong because they are only “somewhat different,” but if they are different enough from all past cases (bombs), then you can’t complain about N=2. Hope this helps.
Just a little more context: I worked in the newspaper biz for 25 years before bailing out in '09. The bane my existence back then (one of many actually) was "trend" stories where somebody from the New York Times interviews six people and declares a trend.
By the way I found your website & loved what you said about behavioral economics. I never made it past Econ 101 but I remember trying to explain basic concepts to my dad, who worked in a nail mill. He would look at me like I had no earthly idea how the world really worked.
I get that, but taking the extreme outlier behavior of two people and implying they have something to say about our culture at large strikes me as seeing a trend that isn't really there. If the culture of victimhood is supposed provide all of these incentives for people to see themselves as victims, why are we seeing 2 vs. 2,000 or 2 million?
Someone claiming to be of a different race than they actually are is highly aberrant behaviour. But the author believes it nevertheless illuminates the contradictions in how progressives think about race. He may be right. But you can make the general argument without resorting to these particular examples.
No it's not. In fact, many blacks used to do it. It was called "passing". It helped them live better lives. It was not because they "hated" being black. It was because they were discriminated against.
There has to be some benefit now to being considered black. Which is why these two women chose to do it. Jobs, love, culture coolness, whatever, these two got something out of it.
The "true race" of the people accused of being mere "blacks passing as white" is white. Yes, they hated living a lie and pretending to be genetic freaks unworthy of claiming their European heritage (still do).
Are you kidding? American black and black-identified elites are constantly denouncing whites for refusing to pretend to be "black." THEY call it "passing for white." How can you "look white" and be "black" at the same time? That's an oxymoron.
Data sample of two, but massive landslide of responses across nation and world. And that is what is statistically significant no matter how you cut it. The response to this is significant. Two quirky narcissists not that big a deal, a world of interest in this particular variety of narcissism, a VERY big deal
"Blackface"? Krug and Dolezal never looked "black." They simply took advantage of the foolish black elite devotion to forced hypodescent. It is hypocritical to condemn Krug and Dolezal unless you also condemn blacks who insist that "blacks" can "look white" and only "pass for white" because they aren't good enough to call themselves "white" - or so say blacks.
They looked mixed race. Or played up whatever they could to look mixed race. It is not hard to accept that someone is what they say they are, even if they don't look what you think black people should look like.
Black people have been passing for years as white.
But the fact is, they too are usually mixed race. So why not let them call themselves "white". They are as much white as black.
But Krug and Dolezal were not even mixed race. They were white.
"Race" is a continuum. It is possible to be BOTH white and mixed-race. That is why the myth that "blacks" can "pass for white" is similar to saying that Jews can pass for "Aryan." Anyone who looks white because of predominate European DNA is white. The term "passing for white" implies that an inferior imitation is being substituted for a superior original.
The true "crime" of Dolezal and Krug is that they inadvertently made fools out of blacks and their devotion to the "one drop" myth.
The black-identified filmmaker described in the link below thought she was going to track down relatives who "passed for white" and inform them and their children that they were "really black." She did not succeed because they continued to identify as white despite learning of distant "black" descent. If you condemn anyone, condemn blacks and pretend-blacks who promote the "one drop" myth and insist that people who DON'T WANT TO BE BLACK should be forced into it. Don't tell me to be outraged at Dolezal and Krug as long as blacks and their liberal fellow travelers continue to promote a "one drop" myth.
I don't think it is just black people who promote the "one drop" idea. In fact, I have never heard any black person say that if you just have one drop of black blood that makes you black. But I have heard white people say it.
Would any of those white people say that Sonia Sotomayor is the first "black" woman on the U.S. Supreme Court? As a Puerto Rican, she certainly has "black blood" (nearly all Puerto Ricans do). There seems to be a tacit gentleman's agreement that obvious or easily traceable sub-Saharan African ancestry in Hispanics and Arabs is to be politely ignored.
I have researched this subject for a long time. Blacks are the "moral authority" and political power maintaining the "one drop" myth. One can find their denunciations of "passing for white" all over the internet. It was the NAACP who led the charge against adding a "Multiracial" option to the 2000 U.S. Census, claiming that blacks would be irreparably harmed unless all people with even small amounts of black ancestry were forced into the black "race" (with polite exceptions for Hispanics and Arabs, of course).
I’m the hugest fan of your work and writing; I’m so grateful for this perspective during this extremely confusing era of ours.
I would love it if you were able to research and write about the way education is failing poor kids and kids of color due to allowing different standards for different types of kids. The APM reports about phonics and public schools is so enlightening and an example of good intentions doing real harm. I abhor racism and I can see how well intentioned progressives are unintentionally creating racist systems in education.
You can find a short essay on education by him from 1989 here.
https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/LingAnthro1.html
It's 3/4 down the page. I think you'll find it's still interesting.
Has anyone looked into, in cases like these and others, need to belong?
I had a (white, vaguely agnostic, middle-aged) professor who claimed she had no culture -- really what it was is she was a member of the dominant culture and didn't feel connected to anything because of it.
As a Jew, I may not spend a lot of time involved in my community, but I feel connected that community. I have my family over for Sabbath dinner Fridays. I text with my rabbi and call him by his first name when we're in informal settings. I have a place where I fit in and people who will count me as part of their circles simply because I'm Jewish; if we have nothing else identifiable in common, it's an invitation to the table (usually literally).
But when a bunch of white, vaguely Christian or agnostic people get together in public and celebrate who they are, that feels a lot like a white supremacist rally, and people who are craving community might be willing to try to pass as part of a community they don't naturally belong to rather than try to be part of what seems to them a dangerous, or at least undesirable, group of people "like them."
What does it say about America, and what does it say about academia? In our current political and intellectual climate, and especially in certain fields, an academic who suggests to her students that the conditions of life for African Americans has improved since, say, the 1950s is likely to be reported for bias. This is not an exaggeration. Even pointing out that there are many ways for scholars to measure legal, social, political, and economic well being; that we use such measures and criteria to assess the well-being of a wide range of groups around the world; and that these measures are crucial for understanding how to improve the well-being of disfavored and underrepresented groups isn't likely to deter students from calling for such a professor to be punished. I'm interested in what this phenomenon of white women academics masquerading as black tells us about current politics, including but not exclusively racial politics. But don't miss the part of this essay that addresses what can and cannot be spoken in college classrooms.
How can "white" women academics masquerade as black? Define "white" and define "black."
Does this explain Elizabeth Warren?
Elizabeth Warren is even more easily explained. People have long wanted to be seen as having Native American blood, not because they thought it would further their careers but because they thought it was cool. I can't tell you the number of white people growing up that proudly claimed they had Native American blood from a rumored story their family told to them. I haven't caught up with these folks but I wonder what their DNA tests have showed?
Correct. As someone who does genealogy for a hobby, I see this all the time. People will say "our family has a little Cherokee blood". ( It is almost always Cherokee, or Choctaw, because they were considered "civilized". It is never Apache or Sioux) As I research their family, sure enough there is NEVER any native blood. I am not exaggerating, I have never found once trace of native blood in all the clients I have had. Funnily enough, I did find one native ancestor in my own, that we did not even know we had.
It was extremely rare for natives to marry outside their group. And when it did happen, it happened in places like Oklahoma and New Mexico, far more than Georgia and Illinois.
Having native blood is considered "cool". THAT is what drives all of that, including in Elizabeth Warren's family. I am sure they did tell her that. I hear it all the time.
The presumption has been that a little (not too much) "Indian blood" makes a white descendant more American. We didn't "steal" the land; we inherited it.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-9516
From Thomas Jefferson to Indian Nations, 10 January 1809
My Children Chiefs of the Wiandots, Ottawas, Chippeways, Poutewatamies & Shawanese. Jan. 10. 1809.
"...in time you will be as we are; you will become one people with us; your blood will mix with ours; & will spread, with ours, over this great Island."
I genuinely appreciate your writing. You have inspired an expansion of my own thoughts on race and culture. Thank you!
Thanks for another brilliant essay. I love your work and would think it needs no defense, but a few readers are missing crucial points. You say:
“one can situate individuals along a path that ends with Dolezal and Krug. Stage One … [begins] with the music ... dance, dress, movement, speech style, even “attitude,” and ... dating partners.”
This explains the puzzle; “why only 2, not 2,000 or 2 million?” The two are the end of the spectrum, just like the 140 mph fire tornado in Southern California was a one-of-a-kind extreme caused by the fire-suppression that affects all our wildfires here in the West.
As to the complaint, “Don't tell me to be outraged at Dolezal and Krug as long as blacks and their liberal fellow travelers…,” I most enjoyed that you were understanding of those caught in the wokeness delusion:
“Just as Dolezal and Krug were wrongly deemed crazy … there is a little bit of Dolezal and Krug in quite a few black people. The reasons are understandable … However, they require us to avoid the infantilizing treatment that the gurus of antiracist enlightenment insist upon.”
Yes, “Dolezal and Krug are bellwethers of a sort” — canaries in the coal mine — who can serve to alert us to a much larger danger. I had been hoping for someone to explain this, and no one could have done a better job of it.
Context: I signed on to Persuasion on the first day and I have seen every Bloggingheads interview with John and Glenn going back several years. They have essentially transformed how I think about race in America.
One of their biggest complaints is the thin data backing up critical studies and the causes of racial disparity.
And this is why I can't let John slide on this one, as much as I admire his work. The measure of a problem is how pervasive it is. N=2 is not pervasive in a country of 320 million people.
Moreover, using two worst-case scenarios to define a situation is how propagandists and racists perpetuate their evil ideologies. It's not even close to the nuanced thought that John, his peers and the readers of Persuasion are looking for.
I respect John enough to dissent on this one.
Tom, I have a graduate-level background in stats, so I agree completely with your general point about the misuse of thin data. It's a real problem that frequently drives me nuts. But McWhorter's intuition actually follows a legitimate stat argument.
Example: In WWII ~20 million bombs were dropped with explosive power between 0 and 5 tons TNT, but in the last week two bombs with 15,000 tons TNT power were observed. Those two data points are more than 1,000 standard deviations above the mean.
Argument: There’s basically zero chance of that. UNLESS they are drawn from a different population. So with just those 2 points, we can conclude with almost perfect statistical certainty that they came from a different technological era that arrived at the end of the war — even if we know nothing else about that era.
That’s exactly how McWhorter structures his argument. He says Dolezal & Krug are sooooo different than past black wannabes (bombs) that they could not have happened in the previous (1960’s era) of racial prejudice. Therefore, just like two A-bombs prove we are in a new technological era just because they are sooooo different, D and K prove that we are in a new era of race discrimination.
I find his case for “sooooo different” convincing because (1) racism was really, really ugly back then, and (2) these two do not look at all like the self-sacrificing type that would have put up with that. You can say he’s wrong because they are only “somewhat different,” but if they are different enough from all past cases (bombs), then you can’t complain about N=2. Hope this helps.
Steven: I find this logic persuasive, and I'm grateful that you took the time to spell it out like that.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not exactly apples-to-apples comparisons, but I get where you're coming from.
Thanks, Tom. Glad that helped.
Just a little more context: I worked in the newspaper biz for 25 years before bailing out in '09. The bane my existence back then (one of many actually) was "trend" stories where somebody from the New York Times interviews six people and declares a trend.
By the way I found your website & loved what you said about behavioral economics. I never made it past Econ 101 but I remember trying to explain basic concepts to my dad, who worked in a nail mill. He would look at me like I had no earthly idea how the world really worked.
Hi Tom, I sent you a direct message on slack. Does that work for you?
All this from a data sample of two?
This is cultural commentary, not inferential statistics.
I get that, but taking the extreme outlier behavior of two people and implying they have something to say about our culture at large strikes me as seeing a trend that isn't really there. If the culture of victimhood is supposed provide all of these incentives for people to see themselves as victims, why are we seeing 2 vs. 2,000 or 2 million?
Someone claiming to be of a different race than they actually are is highly aberrant behaviour. But the author believes it nevertheless illuminates the contradictions in how progressives think about race. He may be right. But you can make the general argument without resorting to these particular examples.
No it's not. In fact, many blacks used to do it. It was called "passing". It helped them live better lives. It was not because they "hated" being black. It was because they were discriminated against.
There has to be some benefit now to being considered black. Which is why these two women chose to do it. Jobs, love, culture coolness, whatever, these two got something out of it.
The "true race" of the people accused of being mere "blacks passing as white" is white. Yes, they hated living a lie and pretending to be genetic freaks unworthy of claiming their European heritage (still do).
Are you kidding? American black and black-identified elites are constantly denouncing whites for refusing to pretend to be "black." THEY call it "passing for white." How can you "look white" and be "black" at the same time? That's an oxymoron.
https://medium.com/@mischling2nd/its-not-rachel-dolezal-who-s-crazy-but-the-ridiculous-racist-and-contradictory-definitions-of-7a1da0a404f0
Data sample of two, but massive landslide of responses across nation and world. And that is what is statistically significant no matter how you cut it. The response to this is significant. Two quirky narcissists not that big a deal, a world of interest in this particular variety of narcissism, a VERY big deal
There are a lot more than those two - both "pure" (or at least black-blood-free whites) and "tarbrushed" whites.
"Blackface"? Krug and Dolezal never looked "black." They simply took advantage of the foolish black elite devotion to forced hypodescent. It is hypocritical to condemn Krug and Dolezal unless you also condemn blacks who insist that "blacks" can "look white" and only "pass for white" because they aren't good enough to call themselves "white" - or so say blacks.
https://medium.com/@mischling2nd/its-not-rachel-dolezal-who-s-crazy-but-the-ridiculous-racist-and-contradictory-definitions-of-7a1da0a404f0
They looked mixed race. Or played up whatever they could to look mixed race. It is not hard to accept that someone is what they say they are, even if they don't look what you think black people should look like.
Black people have been passing for years as white.
But the fact is, they too are usually mixed race. So why not let them call themselves "white". They are as much white as black.
But Krug and Dolezal were not even mixed race. They were white.
"Race" is a continuum. It is possible to be BOTH white and mixed-race. That is why the myth that "blacks" can "pass for white" is similar to saying that Jews can pass for "Aryan." Anyone who looks white because of predominate European DNA is white. The term "passing for white" implies that an inferior imitation is being substituted for a superior original.
The true "crime" of Dolezal and Krug is that they inadvertently made fools out of blacks and their devotion to the "one drop" myth.
The black-identified filmmaker described in the link below thought she was going to track down relatives who "passed for white" and inform them and their children that they were "really black." She did not succeed because they continued to identify as white despite learning of distant "black" descent. If you condemn anyone, condemn blacks and pretend-blacks who promote the "one drop" myth and insist that people who DON'T WANT TO BE BLACK should be forced into it. Don't tell me to be outraged at Dolezal and Krug as long as blacks and their liberal fellow travelers continue to promote a "one drop" myth.
https://www.topic.com/culture-is-not-something-that-you-can-learn
Dolezal and Krug's true "crime" is inadvertently making fools of the "black race" and their devotion to the "one drop" myth.
https://medium.com/@mischling2nd/its-not-rachel-dolezal-who-s-crazy-but-the-ridiculous-racist-and-contradictory-definitions-of-7a1da0a404f0
I don't think it is just black people who promote the "one drop" idea. In fact, I have never heard any black person say that if you just have one drop of black blood that makes you black. But I have heard white people say it.
Would any of those white people say that Sonia Sotomayor is the first "black" woman on the U.S. Supreme Court? As a Puerto Rican, she certainly has "black blood" (nearly all Puerto Ricans do). There seems to be a tacit gentleman's agreement that obvious or easily traceable sub-Saharan African ancestry in Hispanics and Arabs is to be politely ignored.
I have researched this subject for a long time. Blacks are the "moral authority" and political power maintaining the "one drop" myth. One can find their denunciations of "passing for white" all over the internet. It was the NAACP who led the charge against adding a "Multiracial" option to the 2000 U.S. Census, claiming that blacks would be irreparably harmed unless all people with even small amounts of black ancestry were forced into the black "race" (with polite exceptions for Hispanics and Arabs, of course).
https://medium.com/@mischling2nd/white-racial-identity-racial-mixture-and-the-one-drop-rule-dd4ba7afc834