Is There a Whiteness in Racism?

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"What's really going on is a kind of reflecive anti whiteness," he says. "I think we all walk around pretending that that way of talking about race makes some sort of sense" He adds: 'It's complicated, it's subtle, but there's no responsibility to resolve the complication'

John McWhorter is an author, a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors, a Columbia University linguist, and a columnist for The New York Times. His latest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, argues that we must understand wokeness, quite literally, as a religion.

In this week’s conversation, John McWhorter and Yascha Mounk discuss the nature of today’s social progressivism, whether it constitutes a religion, and how we can actually help to reduce racial disparities in the United States.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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Podcast production by John T. Williams, and Brendan Ruberry

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