Book Review: ‘Woke Racism’ Confronts Racially Obsessed

‘Medievals with lattes” is how linguist John McWhorter describes the dogma-repeating, heretic-expelling, reason-rejecting devotees of the new religion, one that is becoming something like the state-, school-, and corporation-enforced creed of the West despite being rejected by most citizens. The creed often calls itself “anti-racism,” though it freely and frankly practices racism when it proposes, for instance, that being held to the same standards as other groups is not viable for blacks.

To describe the faithful, McWhorter rejects the term “wokester” as being too loaded (though I would point out that both “woke” and “politically correct” began as terms used by the in-group, not hostile outsiders) and instead refers to the practitioners of the new religion as “the Elect” in his astute and pungent book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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‘Medievals with lattes” is how linguist John McWhorter describes the dogma-repeating, heretic-expelling, reason-rejecting devotees of the new religion, one that is becoming something like the state-, school-, and corporation-enforced creed of the West despite being rejected by most citizens. The creed often calls itself “anti-racism,” though it freely and frankly practices racism when it proposes, for instance, that being held to the same standards as other groups is not viable for blacks.

To describe the faithful, McWhorter rejects the term “wokester” as being too loaded (though I would point out that both “woke” and “politically correct” began as terms used by the in-group, not hostile outsiders) and instead refers to the practitioners of the new religion as “the Elect” in his astute and pungent book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.