I love Glenn, but I wish he had read Kendi's book before making such a final judgment. In other words, Glenn needs mastery over Kendi's work first. I'm not saying you can't have an opinion unless you read everything there is to read, but to call Kendi a lightweight without subtlety and all the rest is a bit too easy.
@@ecyranot Well I mean, all the arguments of his books are presented at talks, that you can watch online, so I think one can still safely have an accurate opinion. Plus Glenn was more critical of the platform and significance given to the man, considering his non-substantial track record so far.
@Chester Jeffrey Interesting. Have you heard any of John McWhorter's push back on the general direction of where these racial conversations have gone? Or anyone else for that matter? - and if so what did you think of it?
Silent majority is sometimes used to refer to conservatives. Don't confuse McWhorter for a Trump supporter. He's been going out of his way lately to signal that he thinks the orange man is bad.
Three cheers for calling what is. Accessing your inner Honey Badger as Gad Saad recommends. The lunacy coming from University Woke culture needs to be confronted.
@Rosen Bar Right. When McWhorter was on Sam Harris a few months ago they talked about being of the left and at one point McWhorter says something like, "we can leave a seat at the table for [the wokesters] but the adults are talking now and these conversations are going to move forward with or without them." IMO, the best critiques of the Church of Woke come from the atheist left. John, Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, Lindsay/Pluckrose/Boghossian, Saad, Andrew Doyle, Brendan O'Neill, Gad Saad, etc. Shoot, even Bill Maher has had some great segments over the last 3-4 years tearing into this new religion. Douglas Murray has the best arguments on the right (Glenn is great too but I'm not sure how "right" he is these days.) but outside of that most commentators on the right are arguing from the right and are not as well read on the background of intersectionality and CRT so they can't expose how ridiculous it is on its own terms.
Glenn Loury is a goddamn national treasure and his profile needs to be known across all mainstream outlets. This man should be the leading black intellectual who’s voice holds the weight currently given to lightweights like Kendi
National treasures like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, these are the people I choose to learn from. They should be mandatory reading in school but then too many Blacks would become 'woke' in the right way... and see the systematic disempowerment of the Dem party.
He has certainly earned his status and backs it up effectively. If anyone takes the time to listen, you will be enlightened on some damn thing. John adds a nice spice to it, as well
@@RubyTwilite are there liberal Black intellectuals as well? Interested in learning from both sides of the isle. Genuinely feel that some folks in the comments are trying to come off as intellectually open, yet shun liberal ideas.
@@RubyTwilite I second that as the only person I believe to be truth currently is Thomas Sowell. He tells it like it is in a very mature way even when he "insults" or speaks on others its never done in a negative way. Also, intellectuals are nothing more than people with ideas and in the words of Thomas Sowell. "The idea sounds good, but doesnt match up with reality."
Johns right. The man is a peddler and magnet for the bigotry of low expectations. Kandi tried his poison on John and got kryptonite in return. Glenn's passion in summing up was as epic as it was correct.
Truly a representation of Yin and Yang, which is why these two work so well together. Mcwhorter struggling to say a harsh word, while Glenn drops f-bombs in righteous indignation lol
Glenn is the one of the few persons like Douglas Murray and Christopher Hitchens, who, when at their most passionate in verbal debate, sounds every bit as erudite and eloquent as if they had researched and prepared a written speech for presentation. Kendi is right to fear these men.
@CrateofStolenDirt Sadly have to second this. While I respect Loury as an intellectual, neither his nor Murray's extempore speech come near as close to matching the standard of well-prepared oratory as Hitchens' did. In Murray's case, I'm not even sure his prose does.
@Chester Jeffrey --if racially inciting division has any real purpose in the world, Kehndi is at near top of that. If attempting to guilt trip people, and helping people really embrace victimhood he has a knack. That he has nuance or any awareness of bringing any harmony or inclusiveness, in our world, he has shown none. Of all things that make our world better, he seems to care very little. Puffery vs substance is an excellent point Glen made. Hateful and spiteful perspective have no real constructive purpose but an end in themselves.
@CrateofStolenDirt --I have listened to much of what Glen and John have had to offer for a while now. They have proven credible and capable on most topics they tackle. Research is always fair minded and thoughtful. Humor, when needed, is often included. They have both been reliably able to adjust their stance when fact warrants it. I have also been impressed with individuals that they have conversations with and used as reference. Those characteristics do not give the impression of the many buffoons, unnamed at this time, I could ably name ad naseum. (Over proportionate?)
This is some of the hardest, most intellectual talk on RU-vid right now. We're privileged to be flies on this wall. Bravo, Mr. Loury and Mr. McWhorter. *golf clap
I just bought Kendi’s book because I feel like I need to read it to be intellectually honest. I’ve listened to so much from McWhorter, Lowry, Harris, and Hughes that I overwhelmingly agree with. I just need to swallow hard and read Kendi and DiAngelo. I honestly just feel guilty for given them more revenue.
I'm just gonna check them out from the library. Maybe make it into a game-a point for every time the phrase "bIack bodies" or "bIack rage" is used. Nothing like emotional manipulation in place of logic.
@Mike Girard As if there’s anything I could say to change your mind 😅 Clearly you’ve given this a lot of thought and have a low opinion of Loury - though, if he began agreeing with your views, I suspect that might change 😉 Regardless, I honestly don’t care enough about this to argue so let’s just agree to disagree ✌️ Happy Thanksgiving!
We've been too polite for too long my friends. If there is such a thing as a zeitgeist, that there is something in the air that we can feel but can't verbalize, tell me if this doesn't feel like one of those moments in time? Keep going Glenn and John, we need you more than ever.
There's clearly a zeitgeist, and I like your interpretation of the definition. But rather than the typical "spirit of the age" definition of people filled with inchoate thoughts and feelings (paraphrased from you), I tend to think of it in uglier terms. I think the zeitgeist is nothing more than the actions and raw emotion of the barely cognizant herd. The sum of all the ideas and actions of the masses of people who don't think as they go about their days. Call me cynical, or worse, but I think the zeitgeist is the result of stupid people doing stupid things and spreading stupid ideas. Jersey Shore and the Kardashians are part of the current zeitgeist. Need I say more?
In Stamped from the Beginning, Kenid calls McWhorter a "color-blind segregraionist" (pp.483-484). I haven't read McWhorter but I've watched a lot of him on RU-vid and I can't find any evidence of him being either color-blind or a segregationist.
You guys blow me away. Don't stop. I cannot even begin to say how valuable your conversations are for our precarious cultural moment. But this excerpt. Wow. It almost moved me, no, it did move me close to tears. That is bizarre, I know, but you understand responsibility. Ah yes, it just struck me why it is so touching. A Biblical verse comes to mind: "Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly" (James 3:1). Students are overpaying for time at university (I do not want to call it 'overpaying for an education') and are being indoctrinated with sub-par work (I do not want to call it 'scholarship') and our society is bombarded with it via the media. It needs to be countered now. Thank you Glenn and John. How about you two read and analyze Kendi's work? Your viewers / the world will profit from your interaction with Kendi's output. It would be a public service. Just imagine if it were to go viral and touch many.
I’ve never been impressed with Kendi’s reasoning. I remember running into a video of his on you tube in 2015 and finding his arguments so absurd I thought it was a comedy skit! Seriously, I thought he was in on it and the video was some kind of parody. I’m no longer laughing however. The principal of our school sent an email a few months back urging all the parents and teachers to attend Kendi’s webinar, endorsed by OUSD. His half baked ideas are spreading like wildfire. We did not attend but many parents and faculty members did.
Glenn and John have such an amazing dynamic. Listening to John share his thoughts, I always find him to be soft spoken, well thought out in his assessment and able to back up his arguments. While Glenn does egg John on, the benefit of John is that he has the ability to use linguistics and wording to put an individual in their place without raising a voice. At the same time, I don’t think a lot of us would have an issue sticking up for John because he is a wonderful person to respect and has a great level of credibility in thought.
John: I agree, but I'm only halfway through the book. I think it needs to be contextualized vis a vis canonical texts in the Af-Am biographical tradition, especially Douglass and Malcom X, that feature conversion-moments in which the autobiographical subject suddenly awakens from his moral slumber into a new way of seeing the world that he embraces fiercely and that, in his own mind, doesn't just anchor him in reality but endows him with unassailable righteousness. (Douglass does that once, with Covey; Malcolm awakens a handful of times, each time rejecting the delusions that he now understands to have been the given of his prior life, and never once pausing to say, "I sure do like to awaken from, and reject, stuff I used to embrace. What's up with that repetition compulsion?") Kendi's book is rich with psychological material; I'm not convinced that he fully appreciates the revelations he's offering us. Glenn: You haven't read the book?? Please do. We urgently need to hear your considered thoughts on it.
The problem isn’t that he has genuine insights to share. It’s that he doesn’t seem to use reason to rationalize them. He is a typical postmodernist in that he thinks ”reason” is racist (which it isn’t to anyone who knows their stuff) and that is a big problem as it means all he has to resort to is grandstanding.
As a black man with six earned degrees from elite institutions, I must say that I am livid that these institutions hid black conservatives from us. It is inexcusable that through six degree over several disciplines (law, business, education, divinity, mathematics), we were never assigned any books written by black conservatives. It should be a crime that for any student NOT to encounter the work of Thomas Sowell. I encountered John McWhorter's research first while finishing my then pro-affirmative action decades ago, but that is only because I purposely sought out opposing black voices. My views since then have shifted dramatically. Nevertheless, Glenn Loury's closing in this video is a tour du force that should be played for every student entering a Ph.D. program. Bravo gentlemen.
It's not rude to call out dumb ideas and those who espouse them. It's like Gad Saad's take about "parasitic ideas." Frankly, I absolutely trust JMW 's appraisal of Kendi's.
I think the discussion here would be richer if Loury had led Kendi's work. I'm not interested in defending Kendi, but to repeatedly say, "I'm not going to read him" or, "I haven't read him" just discredits what might be valid criticism of Kendi, and reduces this to a bunch of insults.
Glad to see some temper being thrown where it's due. For far too long, many people got accused of being racist and hateful, and all they reacted was to remain silent or even bend their knees. It's time to make the determination of who and what's racist more democratic. No longer can we allow a small group of people who are only good at crying racism define the narrative.
There is value in spending time openly criticising ideas. While John was attacking his character as well as his ideas, I believe there is an element of his character that is worth criticising too, because Kendi clearly has a superiority complex that goes along side his poorly constructed ideas, both of which are dangerous, and much more dangerous when packaged together in one person.
It is very important to call him on it. In fact, you must. Please continue to do so. Letting lies and stupidity stand is destructive. For all of us laymen, these lies are extremely destructive. It hurts current relationships. It stops potential relationships from even beginning.
So is this only available via the 10$ level on patreon? I would love to support but if I add up all the podcasts I support it will soon exceed my monthly phone bill :(
This is available to both $5 and $10 tiers, and will become available for free later this week. There will be extra Patreon-only content too though, things by Glenn that don't fit the usual TGS format-those will be available to $10 subscribers.
I just finished a book about the cult leader Jim Jones and Ibram X Kendi reminds me a lot of a cult leader. He wants us to believe everything he says is correct, he shames you for ever even questioning him and he pushes this extremist simplistic, divisive view of the world. Also, I agree with John McWhorter... Ibram X Kendi has dumb ideas. He has a weird fake look you see with some scamming preacher.
In The Netherlands we have a similar situation. The scholar is G.Wekker and her political counterpart is S.Simons. And they both sell the ‘everything is racist’ idea. And it’s nonsense. Especially for younger people (students) it can be really confusing. But time will sort it out. And both women will get their due.
"command of a height from which you can survey". Very much agree. Problem is, people who have done some of work might not know how little they have climbed through erroneous (typically human) self perception. In the public space it might be difficult for many that follow the "church" to say it, but you can bet that if you sense something slightly "off" with the rhetoric, plenty of others who don't vocalise it feel the same. So all this won't last, and like said here, I'll get on with my knitting and wait for it to all blow over. This is a great channel. 2 affable intelligent people putting the world to rights with a good bit of wisdom.
The problem is that so many good and powerful people have staked their reputations on Kendi. The Fame Mill is fully operational and must direct all resources to maintaining the illusion of greatness that surrounds Mr Kendi. Your comments John, insightful though they are, are making a lot of the associates of the Fame Mill look foolish. They don't like it. You shouldn't anger them. They'd like you to please stand down John. They are asking you nicely to please stop criticizing Mr Kendi. If you don't stand down soon, many human resources people will lose their jobs John. Many wealthy people who've donated to his great work don't want to look foolish. Do you want those wealthy people to look foolish? Well, do you? John?
I would like to hear Glenn the economist respond to Kendi's statement that you can't be an anti-racist if you are a capitalist. (Quote can be found on RU-vid video of Kendi addressing UC Berkeley.)
Kendi has defined what he means by 'anti-racist' and 'racist' and said that those two categories completely comprise the set. Which category would you have him put you in?
I'm wary of using Patreon, especially after all the shady stuff they got up to last year, but I'm willing to send money if it means you guys get better recording equipment ;-) keep up the great work, gentlemen.
I love your show! So much good stuff. You really get at the heart of the matter. One thing that would really help your show is getting a better camera and microphone. Your content is really good and it deserves more professional audio-visual technology. Peace to you.
When Glenn suggested, "Let a thousand flowers bloom." May be that was a wink to the Mao era. I don't know what his intent was. Yeah, we have to go there.
The weakest I've ever seen Glenn. John was attacked by Kendi with insults; with the deepest of insults one can muster. John is a HERO for simply maintaining the strength of spirit to defend himself from yet another McWoke con artist and stand up against the incessant onslaught. Thank you both for the discussion. Peace.
I agree with what you say about Ibram Kendi’s book. But I also think we should show him where he is wrong and challenge him where his ideas contradict. I wouldn’t call him dumb but he certainly needs to acknowledge some of his faults in the book.
