John McWhorter leans on the work of Clifton Casteel.

We get closer to truth in examining what black kids’ attitudes toward school may have to do with the problem. A study in 1997 very neatly got at the issue. It found that among eighth and ninth graders, most white kids said they did schoolwork for their parents while most black kids said they did schoolwork for the teacher.

I know of no study that more elegantly gets across a subtle but determinative difference between how black and white kids tend to process the school thing. For the black kids, school is something “else,” something for “them,” beyond the comfort zone; for the white kids, it is part of the comfort zone. This is not something the kids would consciously be aware of, but being really good at school – and this would include tests – requires that it becomes a part of you. To hold it at half an arm’s remove all but guarantees that you will only ever be so good at it.

Scott Alexander recycles a phrase he seems to have invented.

The whole process was a very clear example of a respectability cascade. There’s some position which is relatively commonly held, but considered beyond the pale for respectable people. In the beginning, the only people who will say it openly are extremely non-respectable people who don’t mind getting cast out of normal society for their sin. Everyone attacks them, but afterwards they are still basically standing, and their openness encourages slightly more respectable people to say the same thing. This creates a growing nucleus of ever-more-respectable people speaking openly, until eventually it’s no longer really that taboo and anyone who wants can talk about it with only minor stigma.

We may be witnessing a respectability cascade for the view that the virus probably escaped from a lab in Wuhan. I hope that someday we witness a respectability cascade for the view that anti-racism is baloney sandwich.

I write,

This exercise is also showing that two-person podcasts tend to promote high-quality discourse. I speculate that this is because when you have to focus on another person, you are aware of the need to be reasonable. If one person starts to go off the rails, the other person is there to pull them back. This is in contrast to Twitter, where your focus is on the audience, and where you can be rewarded for intellectual malpractice by people who enjoy seeing another person being attacked without any consideration for fairness.

Matt Yglesias writes,

it’s sloshing around quite broadly in progressive circles even though I’ve never heard a major writer, scholar, or political leader praise or recommend it. And to put it bluntly, it’s really dumb. . . it is broadly influential enough that if everyone actually agrees with me that it’s bad, we should stop citing it and object when other people do. And alternatively, if there are people who think it’s good, it would be nice to hear them say so, and then we could have a specific argument about that. But while I don’t think this document is exactly typical, I do think it’s emblematic of some broader, unfortunate cultural trends.

He is singling out “The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture” by Tema Okun. She happens to be white, which makes it somewhat safer to pick on her. I have not read the essay, but my fear would be that it is about average for a diversity, equity, and inclusion training seminar.

I have a notion of starting a podcast that I would call “Adults in the room.” When I consider the political/cultural climate these days, it feels like a nightmare in which I am on a highway and all the other cars are being driven by 4-year-olds. Both major parties are intimidated by the worst of their constituencies. There seem to be few adults in the room in politics, universities, or even major corporations.

I disagree with Matt quite a bit. But at least he strikes me as an adult in the room.

Mustafa Aykol says,

the coercive system we have in the Muslim-majority world today, in countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran, doesn’t make individuals pious—it makes them hypocritical.

This applies to the Woke religion, I think.

Ryan Streeter sees hope.

nearly a third (32 percent) of Americans say they get a “strong sense of community” from their American identity, compared to only 17 percent who feel the same about their race or ethnicity. Even amidst a slight drop in intense patriotism in 2020 amidst a pandemic and racial unrest, YouGov poll results showed robust levels of patriotism among a majority of Americans and even a slight uptick among young adults, Democrats, and Black Americans. You wouldn’t know this from the prevailing media narrative.

He offers other optimistic indicators.

In this podcast with Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson speaks with all of his old passion and intensity. Peterson even earns a Caveat point. Perhaps his central proposition is that there is value in institutions that socialize people, but he does include the caveat that they can become corrupt.

In a summary, I write,

my vote for the most impressive item this week is the podcast with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. Both of them demonstrated steelmanning twice (each one separately steelmans Kmele Foster at the end), with McWhorter also scoring two caveat points and one Open to changing his mind point.

Do you agree that this podcast showed two intellectuals at the top of their game?