Lemon mentioned the idea of how “isn’t it better, rather than shutting someone down, to listen what they have to say; so then, you learn how to argue against it?”
As McWhorter said, there are incidents when that idea just doesn’t apply to campus protesters:
Oh, no, Don — not when comes to racism — is what these people are thinking. They’re thinking that there are certain things that are off the table… These people are proposing that racism, and that which offends me, is the same sort of thing — that, all of a sudden, free speech doesn’t matter because we’re talking about something where all the talking has already been done; and, therefore, they feel like they’re in the right to shut down any kind of discussion.
McWhorter knows the routine all too well, as he also spoke of microaggressions:
This starts, I think, with the interest in what’s called ‘micro-aggressions.’ And so, what we used to call ‘it’s the little things’ — the kind of racism that’s just little X — little things that are annoying. That started being discussed extensively on college campuses about four years ago. Add to that, Black Lives Matter and the protest model, and you have a combination that makes a lot of students feel that what their job is, is to show that the campus is a very racist place, and to show it in extremely uncompromising terms, as if this was the same thing as people walking across a bridge in Selma.
When it comes to these microaggressions, McWhorter isn’t completely unrelenting. He does acknowledge that “there is a such thing as a microaggression. I’ve felt them. I’m sure you have.” His overall points are that much more important then though as he continued:
But when you get to the point that you can define just about anything a white person does or says as a micro-aggression, what you’re really doing is bullying out of a sense that somehow, white people deserve this after all of these years of racism. And the problem is, it’s not constructive; and it essentially just creates strife, because even the best minded of white people are going to push back against that.
McWhorter also clearly outlined what was something worth protesting, such as against a party which only admits white girls. He then referenced the concern of cultural appropriation at Oberlin, because some believe the Asian dishes were not made correctly. As McWhorter said about such students, “they’re seeking to be upset in this case, because they feel like it’s what make them wise people.”
Around the middle of the segment, McWhorter told a story of a racist joke he heard in 1984. He says that:
Even in 1984, that was pretty tacky. But I didn’t walk out crying. I didn’t write an editorial in the paper. I thought, boy, I am better than her — and I still feel it now. And I think all of us could benefit from some of that.
We could all benefit from McWhorter’s attitude, some more than others — particularly college students.
