Ideas - Woke Racism and the Language Police | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & John McWhorter

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Writers Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and John McWhorter share common concerns about language, race and politics in our polarized society. They discuss the chilling of civic discourse for fear of political censure and how wokeness is condescending to Black people at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.  

Bankman Freed's entire house of cards started to crumble as crypto asset prices plummeted in May. This morning we unsealed an eight count indictment charging Samuel Bankman Freed. I'm Jacob Silverman, host of the new podcast, The Naked Emperor. I'm going to explain how Sam Bankman Freed built and destroyed a multi-billion dollar crypto empire. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayaad.

The Aspen Ideas Festival is an annual gathering of thinkers having provocative and constructive conversations about some of the thorniest issues of our times. One theme that emerged from the 2024 festival was something we've been hearing a lot about. The effect of polarization on issues like race, politics, and social values, to the point where opposing viewpoints are shunned and even vilified. And what gets lost is an accurate picture of the complexity and messiness of real people in the real world. Take just one issue, inequality. One needs to understand how inequality works.

But for the idea to be that everything is about who's on top and who's on the bottom, with that often being a shorthand for white people on top and everybody else on the bottom, what it is is not wrong, but it's vastly oversimplified. To take on that view is to abjure the responsibility of engaging the fact that life is complicated and that social history is extremely complicated. That's John McQuarter, a linguist and columnist for the New York Times, one of two African-American writers we're featuring in this episode. The other is Nigerian-American novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

It's a truism that what's left unsaid can be as important as what is said. But in Adichie's view, fear of giving offence, then being censured by both adversaries and our own political tribe, means uncomfortable truths are getting left unspoken. There are also people who came to me privately, people from my tribe, who would say, I really agree with you, but I can't say it publicly. So I want those people to say it publicly. The more of us who speak up, and what I mean is, you know, speak up for nuance, speak up for plurality, speak up for, you know, anybody who reads fiction knows that there are multiple points of view in the world.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the award-winning novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Americana, as well as the non-fiction books We Should All Be Feminists and Notes on Grief. We begin this episode with the closing session of the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival. Jim Emanda and Ngozi Adichie in conversation with the television host, podcaster, and bestselling author, Kelly Corrigan. So we're living in an atmosphere

where it's awfully easy to be canceled, sometimes as easy to be canceled by your own team as by the opponent's team. And I wonder if we could flesh out some of the possible consequences for all this social censure. Wow. I feel like we should have started by talking about the weather or something. No, but it's so interesting even thinking about because I'm really interested in thinking about language

and how we use language. And I think clarity is important. So when we talk about being canceled, even that is so loaded. And I think a lot of this has to do with how extremely polarized this country has become. The tribalism in America is incredible. I'm African, I've never seen this kind of tribalism before.

And I think that's probably why when you said cancel, something went off in my head because I thought we maybe need to pass that a little bit, which is to say, I think that expression has been co-opted by a particular group of people, which then means that the other group will often say things like that doesn't happen. The level of tribalism, I think,

means that it's difficult for us now to talk truthfully about things. So I want to talk about cancel culture, but before I do, I want to say that just because that expression has been co-opted by a certain kind of sort of right-wing cohort of people, it doesn't mean that it's not happening. It is happening.

And we live in a climate of fear. And we might choose to deny it. I mean, we live in a climate of fear, and we also live in a climate of reluctance to acknowledge that fear, because there are consequences, which is why I'm very carefully answering your question. Yeah. Do you feel that?

Do you feel tongue tied? I try not to. I mean, because I'm so conscious of it and I'm so determined to continue to think fiercely for myself, I have always thought fiercely. I've always believed that I have the ability to think, really. And one of the things that happens, I think, in this country is that in some ways there's a kind of, you're not supposed to think. You're supposed to follow

your tribe. And I resist that really fiercely. But sometimes I wonder whether even that in itself is a kind of, I mean just constantly saying, I don't believe in censorship, whether that in itself is also a kind of censorship. You know, I mean, I wish we didn't have to think about it. I wish we lived in a world where we could just express ourselves. And for me as a writer, I mean,

it's most important to me because I think that literature is so essential. And I know that there are writers, there are talented writers today in this country who are holding back, whose stories would be different if they were not writing in this climate of fear. And there's something very sad about it. Sort of reminds me of this new role in publishing called a sensitivity reader. Have you heard of this? I think maybe you should tell them what that is. Some people are looking like what? It's somebody who reads something before it's published to say how this piece might trigger

various groups and how you could tone it down for greater, broader acceptance? I think it's an absolute disaster. Even the idea of it, I think, is anti-literature. And there's something as well condescending about it for the writer and for the reader. And there's a quote I love by a journalist who writes in England whose name is Kenan Malik where he says that what is often considered offensive to a group is actually often internal conversations within a group. So the idea that publishers can somehow decide what will be offensive to a group is in itself

potentially offensive. And I really believe in integrity of storytelling. So I think that there are people who I I suppose, just set out to offend, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about writers who are telling stories and want to tell them truthfully, especially literature. I mean, literature is the last frontier for journalism, I think, is gone. Sorry.

I think the polarization in this country has really shaped journalism. So it feels to me that literature and storytelling is the last frontier. This is how we can know who we are. This is how we can know how things feel. This is how we can understand human motivation. And if we have sensitivity readers who are saying, well, take that out because so-and-so is going to be offended, we're going to tell lies.

And there's a part of me, and this is maybe the melodramatic part of me, that I think it's terrible that we are going to leave behind for generations to come stories that aren't true. I'll read Belzac to get a sense of that period in French history. I'll read the Russians because you can get a sense of what society was like. People reading contemporary writing today, I'm not sure that they would get a sense, a real true sense of what contemporary life is like. And there's a loss there, like it's a huge loss to us as a civilization.

I think sometimes lately that the truth telling has now been given to comedy and stand up to say, you can say it, you're the only people that are left. Yeah, but even they can't really say. that the truth-telling has now been given to comedy and stand-up, to say, you can say it, you're the only people that are left to say it. Yeah, but even they can't really say it. I know. I was talking to a woman who's a comedian, and she talked about how it was difficult to talk about the things that she cared about, honestly,

because she was always thinking about who's going to be, you know, can I, can I not? And what it does is it makes you feel guilty of what you haven't committed. You know, it's a very strange thing. And I think human beings, we are all fragile. I mean, we really are. And it's easy to say, oh, you know, toughen up, get, you know, you need to be thick-skinned and that sort of thing.

But it's difficult. You know, we're fragile people. And so thinking about the possibility of consequences is likely to make you pull back. And it also could hijack the conversation in the wake of your publication. So if you say one thing that the sensitivity readers told you to take out, then everywhere you go, that's the conversation. Meanwhile, there's hundreds of pages of more meaningful content there to be unpacked. There's also often a focus on saying things the right way and this kind of language orthodoxy.

And what I've found is that sometimes it gets in the way of actually even talking about, so you want to talk to somebody about something but you haven't said it the right way. And suddenly, you're kind of bamboozled because they're saying to you don't say it like that. And in doing that we forget the substance of what we want to talk about and we start to then sort of argue about jargon. Yes. And you know I think we just lose something. I came to the US to go to college in 1997. And I think America has changed a lot in that time. And I don't mean changed in a good way.

I think the level of public discourse has become so pedestrian and simple and uninteresting, boring, actually. Predictable. Predictable. And there's something about it, there's a vitality that isn't there. And the sad thing about it is that I know that it's sort of underneath all the layers of bullshit. You're allowed to say that.

So I had this little idea this morning when I was brushing my teeth. I thought that we should offer to people a red, white, and blue check mark on social media if you commit to certain standards of conduct and if you allow for some external board to fact check you. So that you, somebody who deserves following because you stay within a factual reality. Can you think of other systemic changes that could adjust the discourse? I like that fantasy.

I think I share it. I think maybe it should have started with the presidential debate. I mean, fact checking might have been useful. But again, I think there's a kind of cowardice. And I think I saw it in that debate where journalists couldn't actually say, this is not true. But of course, your fantasy is wonderful, I share it. But what do the social media owners think?

Because social media seems to me that it's set up to encourage this kind of extreme, unnuanced, often untrue positions that people take. But it would be lovely. I think that there are two really extreme extremes in this country, and I don't think they will ever reconcile. But I do think that there is a vast, underappreciated middle of people who I really think want to have conversations

and want to understand and acknowledge that we share a common humanity, all of those things. I really believe that. And maybe, maybe it's that middle that we need to think more about because often it's the extreme, it's the loudest voices that end up shaping public discourse and it shouldn't be because often those loudest voices are on the extreme end. And I'm a lot more interested in that middle. Well, it's interesting to think about the things that might happen if people in the middle are afraid to speak.

And one of them that you've pointed out is that we might acclimate to injustice. We might decide that it takes too much energy to constantly be noting the ways that things can and should be different. Yeah. Which is why I think there's also sort of this need for more people to speak up. Right? And I talked about being fragile humans, and we are. But there is also something about that wonderful strength that comes from knowing you're not alone. I know. Right? And I know that there are women who, because they have spoken in the past, they make it able for me to speak.

And there's, of course, there are consequences. People are going to say stupid things and whatnot, but just knowing you're not alone. So I think in that middle in this country, I don't want to sound sort of scoldy, but I am. People need to have more courage. You know, we need more moral courage. And so I can't tell you how many people have said to me privately, oh, I feel, you know, I really agree with you because I spoke about free speech at the Wreath lecture in London. And there were people who were very upset because they felt that since I'm on the political left, I should not be talking about free speech,

which is strange. But again, it's because in this country, even that idea has been co-opted by the right. And so for some people who are strong tribes people, you shouldn't even talk about free speech. But I'm a writer, I'm a storyteller, and free speech is essential. But there are also people who came to me privately,

people from my tribe, who would say, I really agree with you, but I can't say it publicly. So I want those people to say it publicly. The more of us who speak up, and what I mean is, you know, speak up for nuance, speak up for plurality, speak up for, you know, anybody who reads fiction knows that there are multiple points of view in the world. You know, there are multiple points of view. We need to speak out about those things.

And I think it enriches us. And sometimes as well when people say, oh, you're advocating for free speech because you want to give people the right to be racist or sexist or whatever, but that's not, I mean, again, that's that terrible thing of moving a conversation immediately to the extreme points because of course that's not what I stand for. And I think a lot of people who believe in free speech do not, of course, you know, want people to be racist and openly sexist and whatnot. It sort of reminds me of this James Madison quote, which is some degree

of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of anything. Yes. And so assume that the extremes will be there and don't stop talking to the middle. I mean, just because the extremes are there, just because there's always the possibility of abuse, of anything really, doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it. It's a kind of defeatist attitude that I don't subscribe to. But it's also an excuse, I think.

It's an excuse for moral laziness. I think it's an excuse for moral laziness. So a conversation that people find really hard to have is about mortality and loss. You lost your dad. You lost your mom in 2020, 2021. I too have lost both my parents recently. So let's have the hard conversation. How are you different? What do you know that you could only learn that way? Hmm.

Oof. Let's talk about you, Kelly, instead. But I want, I, I, I listened to your eulogy about your mother and I was so moved by it. And there's a, it's sort of like we now belong to the society of the, you know, of the bereaved. When your parents are gone and you feel, especially if you had a good relationship with them, you feel unmoored.

I still feel unmoored. How has it changed me? I think there are ways in which it's made me cold. Yes, yes. I think my mother's death in particular. I make peace with my father. I was such a daddy's girl. My father was the loveliest man in the world.

Really, he was. And nobody should argue with that. He really was. Next to mine, but whatever. No, mine Really, he was. And nobody should argue with that. He really was. Next to mine, but whatever. No, mine first, then yours. And when he died, he died suddenly during COVID. And I just felt that I have always been James and Gris Adichie's daughter.

Now, James Adichie was gone, and it kind of made me think, what am I now? And my father was always kind of my sounding board. He read everything I wrote. He had very clear opinions about things. And suddenly that was gone. But a part of me thought, well, mommy's still here. And then I would, part of mourning, I think, is this panic about who else am I going to

lose. And this sense of, I want to hold on to what I have left. You know, I want to hold on desperately. And then a few months later, my mother died. And I just, you know, I was stunned. And I don't think I've made peace with that. And so when I talk about coldness, there's a lot of anger that I feel about my mother dying

when she did and how she did, very suddenly, in what we think might not have happened had she had better medical care. And yeah, there's that coldness, but there's also a kind of awareness of your own mortality. I've always kind of been aware of my mortality. I've always sort of been a dark, yeah, a very dark thought, Skelly. And so now I look at my daughter, for example, and I'm thinking, you know, I really need to be alive for her. Like, I need to be alive for long enough to make sure she's okay when I die. It's hard.

And it really doesn't go away. I mean, this idea that people have said to me gets better with time. It's less immediate, I think, with time. But when it comes, it's heavy. Yeah. I was with my mom when she died and I totally fell apart. And then the next person in the room was my daughter. And then I just fell apart all over and she became me.

Like she was rubbing my back and saying, it's okay, mom. It's okay. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm probably scaring you. And she's like, I'm not scared. And it was like, yeah. I think it's very beautiful to let young people know about death. Yeah, we shouldn't run away from it. It's difficult to talk about, of course, because it terrifies us that we're going to lose people we love. But I think it's a useful thing to do to talk about it.

My daughter was four when my father died, five. And then, of course, her grandmother dies afterwards, and she recently lost an uncle, my husband's brother. And she's sort of almost sanguine about death. She's like, yeah, when are we going for uncle's funeral? She's just, and a part of me is thinking, is this normal? Is she healthy mentally? But I think it's simply that very early on, she became aware that death is part of the cycle of life. And I think this is a country,

this country in the US that particularly shies away from talking about death. And it's even reflected, I think, is a country, this country in the US that particularly shies away from talking about death. And it's even reflected, I think, in the medical system. My husband is a physician here. And he talks about how often there's this sort of desire to deny death and to sometimes put patients through really difficult, rigorous trials when really maybe the time is to let them go in peace and sort of good hospice care and maybe part of it is because we don't talk about, we don't make the conversations about mortality ordinary,

not normal, ordinary. And for those of us in the Society of the Bereaved, I think it would be helpful. Like, listening to your eulogy about your mother, I got teary because I just felt, here's one more person who's feeling... You know, grief is very, very personal, but also it's very universal. And so I thought, here's one more person who, you know, I'm not alone. And there is something comforting about that. It's also, I mean, there could be no more connective tissue between two people. So often when people say to me, I'm sorry to hear about your mother, I say, are your parents alive?

And then they tell me their story and it's like, yes, like all distance is gone. And we could do that across the political aisle. You could remember that everybody is somebody's child. And maybe that would change your sort of emotional, physical reaction to a person with whom you are reluctant to connect. And also just remembering that everybody's going through something. I mean, that's kind of, you know, I mean, in a dark kind of way, it's comforting. I agree.

You know, we're all going through something. Is there a ritual, a Nigerian ritual that you found super helpful? Per that point, I always wanted people to keep wearing armbands. I want to know if you're grieving. And I want you to know that I am too. Is there something? No, what I did find very comforting was just the funeral. I mean, before my father died, I was a bit,

I wasn't very keen on sort of the Igbo traditional way of mourning, which is often quite a celebration. And I just thought, you know, why should I celebrate? Someone died. But then my father died and we had, you know, my father was Catholic, but we had a Catholic funeral, a Catholic mass, but we also had the full Igbo traditional rites where, you know, different groups come. There's a process. You dance a lot. I was holding my father's photograph and dancing surrounded by people. And I found it so beautiful. I found it comforting. Again, that idea

that I was part of a larger group. So these women just, you know, women singing in Igbo and I'm dancing and there's drumming and I really found it very comforting and it surprised me because I think one of the things that grief does is it surprises you. You really don't know how you will grieve until you grieve. And you might not necessarily grieve the same way twice. Absolutely, because I haven't. I mean, I've dealt with my father, I think. My mother, I haven't.

It's been such a different process. And yeah, we, yeah, often we say we grieve differently. We really do grieve differently. And when you ask about how I've changed, maybe the other thing is that I've become less sure of certain things. Yes. I've become more porous, flexible, a bit less smug, because, you know, grief teaches you

that there's a lot you don't know about yourself. Don't you think those final moments, I felt overwhelmed with the mystery of it. Yes. Which is the antithesis of feeling smug and certain. Yes. It's like what is happening right now? Can she hear me?

Why is her hand cold? Why is her hand now warm? Yes. And then I think my father was such a force. So was my mother. My mother actually was a bigger force. My mother was, you know, my mother was just, she was intelligent. She was very bold. She spoke her mind. She was beautiful. She occupied space and suddenly she's gone. And I'm thinking, where is that

force? You know, and it doesn't matter what one believes about the afterlife, but it's the idea that something is gone. And I can't, I mean, I often spend a lot of time thinking about it, but it's that, the unknowability of it that makes you realize how small you are. Do you feel like you were able to pull any of that force from her and tuck it inside you and? I wish I did. But you don't? So I really envy people who say that.

She's just gone and I and it's just awful. The thing I realized I was missing the most was being loved like that. I don't think that it's likely that you'll be loved by other people the way your parents loved you. Nope. If you were so lucky to be loved by those kinds of parents. No, nobody will ever love me like my parents did. And really it's their love that I think sort of propelled me.

And people will often say to me, well, you don't seem to care about sort of pleasing people. I like pleasing people I like. And the reason is I think I was loved. My parents, their love was steady, unquestioning. It was always there. And that's such a gift, I think. And when I was growing up, I thought it was normal. But I thought everybody had that. And now I realize everybody doesn't. And so when you have that good fortune, it's a precious gift.

Gememanda Ngozi Adichie is the award-winning author of the novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Americana. She was in conversation with the best-selling author Kelly Corrigan at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, hosted by the Aspen Institute in Colorado. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast, heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on SiriusXM, on World Radio Paris, and in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca. Find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayaid. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back

with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. John McWhorter is best known as a New York Times columnist, preoccupied with the politics of language, race, and culture. In particular, he's known for his critique of wokeness as a worldview that's basically rooted in the truth, but which has become an ideology with religious overtones. McWhorter argues that its adherents have focused on policing language and punishing those who don't agree with their progressive values,

instead of fighting to win hearts and minds outside of their immediate tribe and make a difference to people's lived realities. In the process, he says, they've played into the hands of the political right, which has turned woke into a four-letter word. John McQuarter is also an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University and the author of Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

He joined fellow New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in conversation at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival. So the first question for me is, how powerful is language? Like, I write a lot of words, and if my words were really powerful, people would do what they want more than they do. Yes. So, and some of the recent politics is based on the supposition that language is really powerful, and you can really hurt people with language. So So how do we think about the power of language or the lack of power? Well, words can certainly hurt,

but I think that we're often taught that language shapes thought more immediately than it does or more immediately than it can. And so, we're often taught that if we change what people say, if we change the language, then we'll change the way people think. And that sounds perfectly reasonable, but it's only slightly true and not enough that would motivate the people who think that they're doing God's work by trying to make us say

different things. And so, random example. There used to be something that was shamelessly called slum clearance. People were supposed to like the idea that slums were being cleared. A lot of people who lived in the quote unquote slums didn't see it that way, not to mention people who were outside of them. And so, there was a new term that you start seeing in the 50s and especially the 60s. The idea was to make people not mind slum clearance by calling it urban renewal. Now, that's a very artful term,

but notice that it didn't change thought. Or I'm gonna do one that's a little bit less cuddly or distant, but it's also very important. Black, then in about 1989, African American. And the idea was to get beyond negative stereotypes of black people. Now, been a while, we're used to the term African American, and the idea was to get beyond negative stereotypes of black people. Now, been a while, we're used to the term African American. I don't think it really budged the needle

on any of those stereotypes. Really, what you have to change is the thought, not the words, but we live in a time when it's often thought, especially by people of a certain political persuasion, that the way to make progress is to keep all of us on our toes about the way we say things. And I think that that is a less rigorous version of civil rights than many people would have

known before and that the left would have known before, not to mention the right. And my general approach is I'll call you whatever you want to be called. Is that the right approach? That is a politeness, of course. But on the other hand, we're often taught today that it's important to keep wanting to be called new things, when really the idea is to change thought rather than to change what people call you. So how do you think about the whole pronouns thing?

Well, this is the thing. Language needs to change if language is not keeping up with genuine categories. And so for example, if there's a time when you're taught to say chairperson or chair rather than chairman, that made perfect sense because there was what was called the feminist revolution. I think probably everybody in this room thinks that that was a good thing. It had been happening for a long time. And so chair made perfect sense. Spouse, it's a word I've never heard anybody use in an old movie. It's a word that we now use all the time. And that's because husband and wife are beginning to sound a little tacky.

That makes sense. There needs to be a they. You could write a whole book about they. Somebody essentially is right now. I'm not going to say who I is, but there needs to be a gender neutral pronoun that grammar pusses have no problem with. They're people who consider themselves neither one nor the other, and you can't have a new pronoun. No offense to anybody, but Z, none of those will ever work.

It has to be something that we already use. There's they, it's hard to use they in the new way, but the kids, 13 year olds, just use it fluently, and so I think we can try. So I'm very much in favor of the they-ness, as much of a challenge as it is. What about, I mean, there's a guy named Frank Luntz who now does more polling, but he used to do phrases, so death panels. Yeah, those are nice ways to get people's attention,

but the truth always out. And so after a while, it's only a sliver of people who really think that there are death panels. That's called colorful use of language, but I'm more worried about it when we are taught that we have to say something on the pain of being labeled social reprobates and losing our jobs or at least our friends. That's not a good look. Yeah. Okay. So let's go to wokeness. What is it?

Um... Wokeness used to be just a new word for politically correct, and I mean in the good way. You are aware of larger circumstances that often go by the name of structural factors, et cetera. Woke is now a slur, and it's a slur because something set in where you were told that if you didn't agree with a certain collection of opinions, you weren't just of a different opinion, you were a bad person, and you literally should lose your job, you should be cast from society.

A lot of people got tired of that. I have to say that, frankly, I was one of them. And that is why woke is now often said with a sneer. And so today, I think, unfortunately, the dominant definition of woke is someone who has coherent, hard, leftist political views who feels that those who don't share them should be shunned and made to suffer.

That is the definition that most people are thinking of. But I miss the days when woke just meant that you understood that life was larger than whether or not somebody called someone a name or, but unfortunately the word is ruined and we need a new word for what was once politically correct and then was woke until about 2019. I'm not sure what that new word is gonna be. [♪ music playing, every third syllable. And so what's it been like to see it get so politicized in that way when you observe DeSantis and the other republicans? You know, David, there's a cuddly answer

I could give to that, but I'm getting old. Honestly, I am not a DeSantis fan, but the way that he is utilizing that word, I'm sorry, but it's the fault of the people who took it upon themselves to start tossing people out of windows for not having their views. It's something that happened especially in 2020, and it happened for a cocktail of reasons.

It's the pandemic. We're scared, we're upset, we're lonely. All of life is on Zoom, where it's really easy to be mean. And so Zoom and Slack created a lot of that new feeling. And what happened to George Floyd was nauseating, but it also happened in the spring, about three months into the pandemic when it started to become clear that it wasn't going to end. And so it was a reason to go outside and be with people and I'm not saying that it was phony. But all of that came together and it meant that all of a sudden if you weren't woke, you were evil. A lot of people, especially people in the middle,

justifiably did not like it. And unfortunately it then ends up overflowing the bathtub and becoming something that somebody like DeSantis can use for the wrong reasons. But it started with some really scary stuff that happened in 2020, and it's why I would write a book like Woke Racism instead of my linguistic nerd stuff. I was really sad, and I was really mad. And DeSantis is just a product of what I was sitting on a porch writing in anger about in the summer of 2020. Now, let's go to a little of the intellectual history here

because in your book you trace some ideas that are core here. And the one that defines wokeness to me, I'm not sure I will use the word in the future, but it's the idea that society is elementally and fundamentally and permanently a series of oppressor and oppressed classes. And it's sort of a Marxian idea that there's always this conflict between class, between oppressor and oppressed classes. And it's sort of a Marxian idea that there's always

this conflict between class, between oppressor and oppressed groups. Is that the intellectual core of what motivates people who then others call woke? Yes. And the problem with it is that there's truth in it. One needs to understand how inequality works. One cannot be taught history the way it was taught in

the 1950s. But for the idea to be that everything is about who's on top and who's on the bottom, with that often being a shorthand for white people on top and everybody else on the bottom, what it is is not wrong, but it's vastly oversimplified. To take on that view is to abjure the responsibility of engaging the fact that life is complicated and that social history is extremely complicated. It's tempting but it's just oversimplified and the problem is that even children can feel that it's oversimplified. It's easier to pretend that change doesn't happen

than to allow the perfectly obvious reality that it does happen, but it happens slowly. And so that's what we should be taught. And I'm not trying to make some cheap DeSantis argument about CRT in schools, but that is what wisdom is supposed to be. The woke idea that everything is about this and this and nothing ever changes, it's not wrong. It's just, it's oversimplified and it's not constructive because in real life, we change things.

And it's not through throwing people out of windows and it's not through telling people not to use certain words. Yeah. Now, in your book, you call it a religion. Why do you do that? Because it is one. And I've taken... I was hoping you'd expand.

Yes. I have taken so much heat for using that word, but any anthropologist who knew nothing about us would see no difference between the way that way of looking at things is wielded and argued and argued against. Nobody would see any difference between that and a religion. And a religion can be a wonderful thing. Most religions also have their seamier sides, and that's what's going on with this religion. What actually made me start speaking out about this is when I thought, this isn't just a

series of beliefs. This is something that is as difficult to reach as a religion. You can see the exact same feeling in its most extreme adherence that you can see in religion. And I wanted people to realize, and this is something that you're not supposed to say at Aspen, and I have to be careful, but we wanna talk across the divide. But there's some people who cannot be reached

about certain issues because it is not about going from A to B to C. On those particular issues, it's a religion. And I noticed that if you have a different view with some people like that and you reach a certain point in the argument, I found myself thinking, wait a minute, this is exactly as if I was trying to teach somebody that Jesus didn't love them. I don't mean like it. It is it. We use different words for it. We say ideology if it's not about Jesus or Muhammad, etc., but there are fine lines between them.

Some people would say creed. But I really meant religion. And if I wrote the book again, I would keep calling it a religion, because I really do believe that that's what it is. A lot of people aren't with me on that, and I understand why, but that's why I call it that. I mean, the obvious thing is,

you're implying that it's not based on reason. Because I happen to believe in religion, so I implying that it's not based on reason. I happen to believe in a religion, so I don't think it's a bad word, but... There's a part of many religions that says that in certain areas you are not supposed to use reason, that you're supposed to just believe, and there's nothing wrong with that. But that's true of this new religion, too. And to hear me say that with my snotty voice and my not being religious, I know. I'm not the best messenger for it,

but I truly believe that. Okay, now what do you do with the argument that, you know, 2020, as you said, it was a very fraught time. But the big thing that happened was racial reckoning, which is like a problem, an issue or a process of this level of significance. And the cancellings were a problem of this level of significance.

So why are you focusing here and not here? That's interesting. I think that the two things are on the same level. So the racial reckoning created many wonderful things. There are things that are becoming normal now that weren't normal in 2019 in terms of our awareness, in terms of who counts, in terms of whose views are listened to.

And I think that's a great thing. But alongside that was this very unnecessarily punitive culture, often in the name of people of my race. And I don't think that was a good thing. I think, frankly, that a great deal of that... And, David, I'm sorry, I'm not being dramatic, but I think a great deal of it was horrible, horrible. And so, to me, the reckoning and then the canceling.

But I take your point, but I didn't see it as trivial. Yeah, okay. You know, one thing, I'm not an expert in a lot of things, including linguistics, but I do work in the New York Times, Yale University, the Atlantic, Aspen. I am an expert in elite progressive institutions. And my perception is that what people call peak wokeness was about 18 months ago or maybe even two years ago now Yes, is that your view? Yeah, it's changing. And why do you think that is?

Because a critical mass of people started speaking out and that's how these conversations go And so I think that the extreme versions people are feeling on the defensive and I think We're beginning to get to a point that I now have this nostalgia for 2019. We're gonna get back to where things were in 2019. I thought there was a great awakening already then, and then came what happened in 2020. I liked the 2019 version better, but yes, things are changing. Yeah, to sound the alarm the same way now

as, say, 18 months ago is sensationalist. Yeah. Now, let's talk about class. You have a concept in the book way now as, say, 18 months ago, is sensationalist. Right. Now, let's talk about class. You have a concept in the book called the elect. And there are many people who made the argument is that the language of what we call wokeness is a linguistic display, frankly, of elitism,

that you have to have a certain level of education to comfortably use words like intersectionality, problematic, cisgender. And so what's the class element here? comfortably use words like intersectionality, problematic, cisgender. And so what's the class element here? Well, you know, I don't see anything wrong with there being a new jargon, so to speak, a certain collection of about 27 words that highly educated people use and that people who are centered in activist communities use.

And you just name some of them, nothing wrong with those words. Latinx is never going to leave that world, and there's nothing wrong with that. Cisgender is one I think about. I had never heard of that. I heard that in about 2013 from my students. I thought I had never heard that as a class of people, but okay, I get it. But those are not going to be words

that the person on the street ever uses, I get the feeling. And there have always been words that hyper-educated people only use. But yes, we're seeing a kind of a class difference there. But you know, any language spoken by more than 17 people has class stratification of that kind. And we're just seeing new aspects of it being born as we speak, which is not usually how abruptly it works. Yeah, but I think there's a, even beyond those words there, I think there's a class element to your argument. I'm old enough to have remembered when I started as a police reporter in Chicago, I worked with journalists who didn't go to college. And now you really could not get hired, not only if you hadn't gone to college, if you hadn't gone to an elite college.

you really could not get hired, not only if you hadn't gone to college, if you hadn't gone to an elite college. And so, well, I'll tell that I shouldn't tell tales out of school, but the New York Times, we have assistants and they filter out all the applications and they give us three and I get a broad diversity of America. I get Stanford, Stanford, Yale. Sometimes I get Yale, Stanford. But there is an element here in a lot, frankly, of the institutions where I work, where, and I would say in the media generally, that basically we decided working class folks were not going to be in our world, and their voices for a long number of decades

were not going to be represented in the world we depicted. And when you look at the depiction of reality and you don't see your story in it, you tend to get angry. And we basically told a lot of people their voices weren't worth hearing. And I think they revolted. And so when I read the phrase, the elect, that's what I heard. That's what I heard. That's what I heard. I know what you mean. And certainly I think there is a perspective among people using these elite words that

people of a different realm of society should use those words, that they should think that way, but they're just too ignorant to. And general developments from that view might make someone feel that those people shouldn't be in the newsroom because their horizons aren't broad enough. Yes, there is certainly that. But the elect, and you know, it's interesting, I'm not good at making up catchy terms. I'm not good at making up term titles for my books. I have to drink to come up with anything for them. And coming up with catchy names for things has never been my forte.

The elect has not caught on. That is, I can tell that that's not going to work, but I use it throughout the book. The elect are usually highly educated people, though. They're not the people who would be revolting from quote-unquote below. They're people who are seeking a sense of belonging among one another and a sense that they're doing the right thing, especially possibly out of working out a certain guilt, because they are the sorts of people who get hired as interns at the New York Times. Okay.

Talk to me about your students. I have found over the years, because of not just, not even canceling, because of fear of judgment from peers, my students have grown progressively less willing to argue with each other in class. Have you found that? Oh, yes. That started in exactly 2013, and it became all but impossible after 2020. And what it is, is not that the students have all quote unquote gone crazy or the like, but all it takes is one and a half students

who stridently believe in say the elect viewpoint and all but maybe one or two especially nervy students will just be quiet because they don't wanna get yelled at or they don't wanna get outed on social media. And it means that it can be, it's not impossible, but it's much harder to get a discussion going because that elect student Is generally brilliant and articulate and scary. It's hard when somebody yells intersectionality into your face And so for class discussion it takes more work. I used to say it was impossible

I'm now learning how to get it going anyway, but it's an art and it's because of fear. It's not the whole student body I would venture that it's probably art and it's because of fear. It's not the whole student body. I would venture that it's probably about one in 20 students, but that's enough to change the whole tone of discussion in class. Yeah. And I observed in the institutions I'm familiar with, in the beginning days, there were the, mostly the elect were, in our institutions, were younger. And then there were people over 40 who were terrified, sort of the liberal progressives, but sort of old-fashioned liberals.

And in my view, in the last year or two, the over 40s and even the under 20s who didn't like what was happening have grown less terrified and have begun to assert themselves and say, no, we will have open discussion here. Very much. And I'm glad to see that conversation, which is often unpleasant,

but conversation has an effect. I think that enough people have said, this isn't the way it needs to go for there to be social justice, that a lot of people have pulled back. Now I'm sure that the people in question feel that racism and sexism and classism have had their way as they always do and they need to look for a new strategy.

But you know, the conversation is always sloppy like that. And it's at the point where, yes, many people are beginning to be brave enough to say, no, let's go back to 2019 and have real discussions about difficult things without anybody being called evil. That is a positive development. Now, your argument is that a lot of these people who want to pursue racial justice are actually having a negative effect on black lives. Yeah, that's the problem.

Explain that. So it isn't just that people are doing something that isn't pretty. It's that in asserting how social justice should work in this way, you end up condescending to black people. You end up leaving black people getting killed in neighborhoods where the police pull back, for example. You end up leaving black kids being underserved in schools where violence is allowed to persist and standards are allowed to persist and standards

are allowed to be lowered in the name of not imposing whiteness on the kids. All sorts of things happen where what I really see is an unintentional woke racism. So the idea is not just this isn't fair or this isn't right, that wouldn't make me write a book about something. It's that I see black people getting hurt and especially these days I hear from black professors who are not woke enough who are getting attacked by woke students Many of whom aren't even black themselves and losing their jobs or being demoted there is a black woman who was evicted from her DEI position in

Dun dun dun to Santa Cunca Cunca, California. I forget One of those... I thought we moved into Scat. DeAnza, something. DeAnza, DeAnza. And she was ejected from her job for not being woke enough. This won't do. That hurts her, that hurts the people she could have helped.

So yeah, my issue with it is not this is no good because it's not good classical liberalism. My issue is you're hurting that black kid. You're hurting that black woman. You're hurting that black grandmother, all in the name of what you're calling the good. I think that needs to be called out. Yeah, there's a level of cruelty in some cases.

There was a story in the Times this week about a black woman who worked on... You know, on Wall Street, quit her job at Goldman Sachs to write a novel, her first novel. And... but the story is a love story between a black woman and worked on, you know, on Wall Street, quit her job at Goldman Sachs to write a novel, her first novel. And, but the story is a love story between a black woman and a white conservative guy. And...

I read about that. Yeah. And so people objected to the plot line, and so they trashed her on Goodreads, which is a way of rating books. And so her book was more or less... That book shouldn't be read. Yeah. Who are they to decide? And the issue is,

if that book were read by everybody in America, what would it hurt? And so what those people are doing is a kind of sincere performance art, but it serves no purpose whatsoever. It feeds no poor black person. It helps no black cause. It gets none of us ahead.

It's all kabuki. That needs to be stamped out. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah. Okay. I think you wrote a column recently on reparations and housing. Do I have that correctly? As you know, you forget them the minute you write them. That is true.

It was either you or me. Oh, you mean the last one? Yes. Yes, I did write that. Yeah. And so it was interesting to me that, because I think you've called yourself a cranky liberal Democrat. I am a cranky, yes. Because I am the Shirley Temple of Berkian conservatives. You are. We go together.

But you are for reparations. Am I got that right? I think we already got reparations. I think it already happened 50 years ago. For years I've said, why do we need new ones? But I'm cranky, but not just for the sake of it. I'm not a performance artist. And I'm reading about all these reparations movements happening, people actually being

given checks to buy better houses. And I started thinking, am I really going to keep saying no, no, no, just because I have this principle? That's not changing. That's me not allowing that the world changes. And so I was thinking, well, you know, I don't love it because I think that everything that needed to be done was done before. Just one thing alone, affirmative action.

You could have called it affirmative reparation. It just didn't happen to be called that. But okay, that was a long time ago. We're in this world. If reparations are going to be about housing, if it's going to be about undoing what redlining did about 10 minutes ago, to be honest, David, what I really think is going to happen is that

if that happens nationwide, the smart take among influential people is going to be to pretend that it didn't matter. It's going to be, you know, there are going to be memes saying they better not think they can treat us like animals for 400 years and just pay us off. If that's what it's going to be, I don't see the point of doing it now.

I would be interested in it as something where we said, wow, we've really turned a corner. This is big stuff. America has come to terms and paid attention. That doesn't mean that you get rid of things that help black people, but it would have to be something enormous. But I'm feeling that it's coming,

and I can't bring myself to stand, afford that, and say no, saying the same things I was saying 20 years ago. So I took a deep breath, and I wrote that column, I now do, I'm writing it, because you have to change sometimes. If you don't change at all, you're either not paying attention or you don't care. But I wrote that one, I eat a lot of Jolly Ranchers.

I wrote that one sucking on a Jolly Rancher and kind of thinking, no one's going to allow that it matters. And so should I admit that I feel this way? But I admitted it. John McQuarter teaches linguistics at Columbia University, and he's a columnist for The New York Times. His most recent book is Woke Racism. He was in conversation with fellow New York Times columnist David Brooks. Special thanks to Jonathan Purvis at the Aspen Institute and to the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival. This episode was produced by Chris Wadsgow. If you enjoyed this episode, you may want to check out another program we did featuring a left-wing critique of wokeism by philosopher Susan Neiman.

You can find that at cbc.ca. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukcic. Greg Kelly is the executive Producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed.