A review by xtina4evahhh
Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Really potent take down of the “religion” that is wokeism. The chart in the beginning of the book laying out all the idiotic paradoxes of this ideology was particularly persuasive. 

Unlike other works on this topic that I feel tend to downplay the racism and discrimination many marginalized groups still face in America today, McWhorter acknowledges those issues, which gives him more credibility than some of his peers. He just doesn’t think DEI/woke ideology is doing a thing to address them and on that point I thought he was very convincing. He has a very simple three step plan for improving the welfare of black Americans: end the war on drugs, teach reading via phonics, and make vocational training an accessible and legit alternative to traditional four year college education. If the woke mobs would direct their resources to these concrete actions rather than screeching “RACIST!” and trying to ruin the lives of anyone who deviates even an inch from woke orthodoxy, progress in enhancing the lives of black Americans might actually be made. 

I wish he’d delved deeper into how to actually enact such a plan (especially the war on drugs part which seems to me about as entrenched in our culture as the racism he says will never be fully abolished), but I understand that’s outside the scope of this book. 

What’s stayed with me a week post reading: the simple point that if we actually care about improving the lives of real people experiencing hardship, then we need to devote our time and energy not to staging moody selfies holding a copy of White Fragility but to taking concrete actions per the three step plan mentioned above.