"I make no apologies for not being a character in the wire," she writes. "The idea that you have to be a character from the wire to speak for black people doesn't work partly because supposedly all of us are undergoing the same kind of oppression." She says there's nothing weird about her views, it's just that we tend to hear most from the writerly people. 'Why write about this when half the Republican party thinks that the election was stolen from them'
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To anyone who has been following the debates surrounding race in America, John McWhorter needs little introduction. A professor of linguistics at Columbia University and a New York Times columnist, McWhorter believes that America is being harmed by a new form of antiracism, mostly espoused by white elites, that is illiberal, illogical and at heart neo-racist. To McWhorter, such thinking is not just a political stance but a religion with all the hallmarks of Christian dogma: white privilege as original sin that cannot be expunged; the hounding out of dissenters as heretics; the evangelical fervour of the true believers. In early 2022 he came to Intelligence Squared to discuss these ideas and the themes of his recent book, Woke Racism. McWhorter acknowledges the heartfelt desire of white people to be allies but, he argues that there is a better way to improve Black lives than what he sees as an unproductive focus on abstract theory. Hosting the discussion is the journalist, author and broadcaster, Helen Lewis.
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