The Center for Inquiry has been ideologically captured by the wingnuts. We’ve known this for a long time, since it was basically bought out by the Richard Dawkins Foundation. CFI has announced a conference coming up in July, in which Richard Dawkins will hand out his annual Richard Dawkins Award to someone he considers worthy. Can you guess who it’s going to this year?
Keep in mind that in the past it has gone to Bill Maher, despite all the groans from the CFI membership.
Do you have a guess?
I’ll spill the beans. He’s giving it to…JOHN MCWHORTER. Jesus christ. He’s one of that small group of anti-DEI freaks who have melted down over the idea that non-white non-men might actually have something to contribute to society (face it, that’s what all the anti-woke/anti-DEI goons are about, that idea that white men are not the pinnacle of civilization.) Here’s a bit from Elie Mystal’s review of McWhorter’s last book.
McWhorter’s central thesis is that being woke — by which he seems to mean acknowledging the ongoing fact of bigotry, systemic racism and the resulting forms of oppression — is a religion. Not “like” a religion — McWhorter refuses to hedge this contention with simile. No, McWhorter argues that people who advocate for anti-racism policies, racial sensitivity training and (of course) “critical race theory” are all part of a religious movement with its own clergy. (Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates have all been ordained, apparently.) He argues that this religion’s “Elect” has taken over the country and “rule[s] by inflicting terror” on those who dare to speak against it. Along the way, he warns that it is “coming after your kids” with a breathlessness that makes him sound less like a thoughtful academic and more like a conspiracy theorist looking for hidden critical race messages in the menus at Chuck E. Cheese.
He’s also an author on that terrible “politicization of science” paper that complained about how science not kow-towing to the far right’s racism is an example of “politicizing”, while ignoring people like Chris Rufo.
The madness of King Dawkins continues its descent. I suspect that McWhorter was hand-picked by Dawkins specifically because they both endorse that “woke mind-virus” nonsense.
Great. Atheism has it’s own Uncle Ruckus.
Edit: its
Yep, gotta fix those typos, otherwise the errorists win!
No, McWhorter argues that people who advocate for anti-racism policies, racial sensitivity training and (of course) “critical race theory” are all part of a religious movement with its own clergy.
No, it’s not a “religion,” it’s based on MORAL principles. There’s a lot of overlap between those two things, but they’re not the same thing. Does this McWhorter guy disagree with those principles? Does he even know (or care) what they are? Is he against making policy based on, and pursuant to, moral principles and goals?
I read that woke was a term used by blacks, especially in the south, to convey a message to be aware of your surroundings. A translation for there is KKK around.
From Wikipedia (apologize but was too lazy to keep looking)
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase “stay woke” as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song “Scottsboro Boys”, which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the defendant’s lawyer and the young men themselves, and “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro) – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”[2][11] Aja Romano writes at Vox that this usage reflects “black Americans’ need to be aware of racially motivated threats and the potential dangers of white America.”[2]
The meaning of woke has gone through a metamorphosis and then the far-right nuts demonized it. Just like they do to anything that isn’t white and Christian. What makes my mind spin and gut hurt is knowing that most Americans do not realize how they are being manipulated. They just ride the hate and anger, and the far-right nuts are happy to keep feeding them.
But if woke is a religion, just think of the tax write-offs.
If not for us “woke” people, John, you’d be toiling in the fields, not safely ensconced behind a college degree and a computer.
This is wrong. It’s also a lie.
If I/we had “taken over the country” and “ruled” the USA, then we would know it!!!
We haven’t and we don’t.
Does Richard Dawkins and this Mcwhorter guy, who I never heard of before, know who won the last election in November?
Apparently not.
The GOP control the entire congress and Trump is the next president.
I don’t know, since being elevated to the (imaginary) rulers of the USA, my life hasn’t changed at all, not even a little.
My cat has quite literally more power than I do. I open doors and feed her any time she wants something.
McWhorter is an insightful linguist and I have enjoyed many of his NYT columns. So I was sorry to see that he failed to acknowledge that calling “woke” a “religion” is a form of category error, attaching too much significance to a metaphorical link between two very different phenomena. At the very least he should offer a definition of “religion.” I always liked Tylor’s classic late 19th century definition, that “religion” is a set of beliefs and practices regarding the supernatural. There is nothing in that definition that would link it to “woke” ideologies. We have metaphorically extended the concept to beliefs taken for granted without evidence, but there are many such beliefs that have nothing to do with the supernatural, and which we would not call “religion” or “religious”, even through some kind of metaphorical extension.
Who are you and what have you done wih the real Richard Dawkins?
Given the way SCOTUS juris prudence is going, it might be nice to be a religion. “Actually, you can’t make me implement this policy to be an asshole to people because it goes against the sacred commands of the woke mind virus” would be a fun twist to do.