Acclaimed linguist and award-winning writer John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism
disguised as antiracism is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.
Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same
question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We're told read books and
listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is appropriation. We hear
that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We
want to speak up but fear we'll be seen as unwoke or worse labeled a racist. According to
John McWhorter the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become
not a progressive ideology but a religion-and one that's illogical unreachable and
unintentionally neoracist. In Woke Racism McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion
from the original sin of white privilege and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban
heretics to the evangelical fervor of the woke mob. He shows how this religion that claims to
dismantle racist structures is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing
Black people setting Black students up for failure and passing policies that
disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called antiracism but
it features a racial essentialism that's barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the
past. Fortunately for Black America and for all of us it's not too late to push back against
woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends
and family. And most importantly he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help not
hurt Black America.
