{"id":83437,"date":"2015-12-27T14:51:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-27T22:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83437"},"modified":"2015-12-27T14:51:43","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T22:51:43","slug":"antiracism-our-flawed-new-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83437","title":{"rendered":"Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black intellectual John McWhorter writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An anthropology article from 1956 used to get around more than it does now, \u201cBody Ritual Among the Nacirema.\u201d Because my mother gave it to me to read when I was 13, of course what I remember most from it is that among the Nacirema, women with especially large breasts get paid to travel and display them. Nacirema was \u201cAmerican\u201d spelled backwards\u2014get it?\u2014and the idea was to show how revealing, and even peculiar, our society is if described from a clinical distance.<\/p>\n

These days, there is something else about the Nacirema\u2014they have developed a new religion. That religion is antiracism. Of course, most consider antiracism a position, or evidence of morality. However, in 2015, among educated Americans especially, Antiracism\u2014it seriously merits capitalization at this point\u2014is now what any na\u00efve, unbiased anthropologist would describe as a new and increasingly dominant religion. It is what we worship, as sincerely and fervently as many worship God and Jesus and, among most Blue State Americans, more so.<\/p>\n

To someone today making sense of the Nacirema, the category of person who, roughly, reads The New York Times and The New Yorker and listens to NPR, would be a deeply religious person indeed, but as an Antiracist. This is good in some ways\u2014better than most are in a position to realize. This is also bad in other ways\u2014worse than most are in a position to realize.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For example, Ta-Nehisi Coates, now anointed as James Baldwin\u2019s heir by Toni Morrison, is formally classified as a celebrated writer. However, the particulars of his reception in our moment reveal that Coates is, in the Naciremian sense, a priest. Coates is \u201crevered,\u201d as New York magazine aptly puts it, as someone gifted at phrasing, repeating, and crafting artful variations upon points that are considered crucial\u2014that is, scripture. Specifically, Coates is celebrated as the writer who most aptly expresses the scripture that America\u2019s past was built on racism and that racism still permeates the national fabric.<\/p>\n

This became especially clear last year with the rapturous reception of Coates\u2019s essay, \u201cThe Case for Reparations.\u201d It was beautifully written, of course, but the almost tearfully ardent praise the piece received was about more than composition. The idea was that the piece was important, weighty, big news. But let\u2019s face it\u2014no one, including Coates himself, I presume, has any hope that our current Congress is about to give reparations for slavery to black people in any significant way. Plus, reparations had been widely discussed, and ultimately put aside, as recently as 15 years ago in the wake of Randall Robinson\u2019s The Debt. Yet Coates\u2019s article was discussed almost as if he were bringing up reparations as a new topic.<\/p>\n

It actually made perfect sense. People loved Coates\u2019s article not as politics, since almost no one thinks reparations are actually going to happen. But belle-lettristic concerns weren\u2019t the key either: Coates is hardly the only writer out there who has a way with the words. People were receiving \u201cThe Case for Reparations\u201d as, quite simply, a sermon. Its audience sought not counsel, but proclamation. Coates does not write with this formal intention, but for his readers, he is a preacher. A.O. Scott perfectly demonstrates Coates\u2019s now clerical role in our discourse in saying that his new book is \u201cessential, like water or air\u201d\u2014this is the kind of thing one formerly said of the Greatest Story Ever Told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black intellectual John McWhorter writes: An anthropology article from 1956 used to get around more than it does now, \u201cBody Ritual Among the Nacirema.\u201d Because my mother gave it to me to read when I was 13, of course what … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t