John McWhorter — What’s “Systemic” about “Systemic Racism”?

On this edition of TGS, John McWhorter is back for one of our twice-monthly conversations. We take a long, critical look at the concept of "systemic racism"—what it is, what it isn't, and why it's become so popular in progressive discourses about race in the US.

We focus attention on institutions of higher education, drawing on our own experience to question whether this concept really applies at the elite institutions (Brown/Berkeley/Columbia) with which we have been associated. We open on a laconic note: neither of us were in the best of moods when we had this conversation. We close by inviting you to suggest topics for our future discussions that are, a) not about race, and, b) areas where John and I are likely to disagree. We hope you'll take us up on this!

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0:00 Intro

2:19 Does systemic racism still exist in the US?

12:26 Addressing “racial inequities” rather than “systemic racism”

18:30 John: “The idea that modern colleges and universities are racist spaces is false”

29:18 Race and the academic job market

34:40 Why does anger persist even after progress toward racial redress?

44:57 The (possible) origins of the recent wokeness wave

52:55 Glenn and John agree to disagree

Links

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

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