JUDY WOODRUFF: Now we turn
to our "NewsHour" Bookshelf.

Jeffrey Brown recently visited Columbia
University to talk with one professor

whose new book pushes back on ideas that
have gained popularity in recent years

amid the ongoing national
debate over race and racism.

JEFFREY BROWN: The recent election results
in Virginia, in which independent voters

like these suburban women broke
heavily for the Republican
candidate, to John McWhorter,

it was part of a growing backlash
against one trend in American culture.

JOHN MCWHORTER, Author, "Woke Racism": I
don't see it as evidence of racism rearing

its ugly head as usual. It's not
a backlash against the racial
reckoning. It's a backlash

against a certain kind of racial reckoning
that alarms people, with good reason.

JEFFREY BROWN: McWhorter, a professor
of linguistics at Columbia University

and contributor to The New York Times,

is one of today's sharpest critics of
anti-racism theory, rhetoric and practice.

JOHN MCWHORTER: I think that
a real extreme point was
hit in the summer of 2020,

and that, at this point, everybody is
rubbing their eyes and realizing that

something went too far, not that
there's something wrong with
a racial reckoning in general,

but that something went beyond
what most even good people
would consider sensible or fair.

JEFFREY BROWN: His new book,

"Woke Racism," pushes back against what he
calls a new religion on the American left.

JOHN MCWHORTER: I wanted to write a book
explaining that this new version of what's

being called anti-racism is actually very
harmful, and sometimes even contemptuous

of Black people, because, one,
if I say it as a Black person,

it's harder, not impossible, but harder to
call me a racist or a white supremacist.

And I also felt that I wanted
to get my version of it out, the
way I'd been thinking about it,

because I got the strong feeling
that a great many people, including
Black ones, agree with me.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're not
denying that racism exists.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Not at all.

JEFFREY BROWN: You're not denying
that a kind of structure is
in place that does harm people

that has historical roots, that
impacts individuals up to today?

JOHN MCWHORTER: Mm-hmm. I don't deny those
things at all. There is personal racism,

and then there's structural
racism, although I wish
people wouldn't call it that.

I like to think of it as
there are racial inequities.

Some of them are due to racism.
Sometimes, the racism is in the
past, rather than the present.

But I think calling it structural racism
encourages a kind of oversimplification

that discourages coming up with
solutions that actually work.

JEFFREY BROWN: The murder of George Floyd
in 2020 led to protests in the streets

and demands for a reckoning
throughout American institutions.

To McWhorter, who calls himself
a liberal, the results have been
largely performative on the part

of many whites, and often
harmful to Blacks, of whom, he
contends, society expects less.

Your sense is that
anti-racism, as practiced,

is itself a form of racism? That seems
to be the strongest charge in the book.

JOHN MCWHORTER: When you
treat people with pity,

when you tell people that they
don't have to try as hard...

JEFFREY BROWN: What does that mean?
Let me stop you. Pity? Try as hard?

JOHN MCWHORTER: Sure.

When your idea is that,
because of a people's history,

they are not subject to the
same standards as everyone
else, and so, if you say, it is

racist to subject Black people
to standardized tests because
history makes it so that they're

not as good at them, and,
therefore, Black people don't
get good at standardized tests,

and run into them later, and, in
the meantime, when you say Black
people shouldn't have to take

standardized tests, there's a short
step from that to implying that
Black people aren't as bright.

And then somebody says, it looks
like Black aren't as intelligent,

and you say that they are racist.
And everybody knows that there's
a kind of double-talk going.

I think Black people deserve better
than that kind of societal dialogue.

JEFFREY BROWN: He points to the
influence of books such as Ibram X.
Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist"

and Robin DiAngelo "White
Fragility" -- both have been
featured on the "NewsHour" -- which

he believes overemphasize racial
opposition and power hierarchies,

a philosophy, he writes,
seeping into American schools.

I wondered if you're subject
to the charge of overalarmist
yourself. I mean, you write,

"These people are coming after
your kids," very strong language.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Everybody
thinks I meant that as some kind
of rhetoric. No, I meant it.

JEFFREY BROWN: You meant it, as in?

JOHN MCWHORTER: This is trickling
into our educational curriculum.

Now we have this whole debate
over whether Critical Race
Theory is being taught in the

schools. Those obscure legal
papers are not being taught in the
schools. But something derived from

that philosophy has become a major
underpinning of what people are
taught in schools of education.

You teach white kids that
they're potential oppressors. You
teach Black kids that they are

potentially oppressed people,
that Black people and white people
live in a kind of opposition,

and that engagement with the
world should be focused on
battling power differentials,

rather than power differentials and
about eight or nine other things.

JEFFREY BROWN: There is in
this country what's called a
reckoning, right, a rethinking.

Doesn't this country need a reckoning, a
rethinking around social justice issues?

JOHN MCWHORTER: You know what?
No. And it's not because I
don't think a racial reckoning

was necessary, but I think that
this country's intellectual and
moral culture had become much

more mature about the nature of
racism, including systemic racism,
especially in the 2000 teens.

I think a lot of this began with social
media and the heightened awareness of the

relationship between cops and young Black
men. All of those things were happening.

JEFFREY BROWN: What kind of
reckoning would you like to see?

JOHN MCWHORTER: I would like to see
the reckoning we were having before.

I guess that makes me a conservative.
I'm talking about 2019. It used to be

that being called a racist really
didn't bother that many people.

We tend to forget how much that
changed by roughly about 1980. Now

you are called a racist, it
almost feels as bad as being
called something like a pedophile.

And that's good. It means that we
have had a heightened awareness.

That's part of a racial
reckoning over decades,

that a white person feels
that to be a racist is one
of the worst things on earth.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, he argues,
things have gone too far,

and he cites cases in which language
has been proscribed or someone has

lost a job or been publicly shamed for
perceived racist remarks or behavior.

JOHN MCWHORTER: What I'm talking
about is a national trend that
anybody who's awake can see.

And it's not just cherry-picked examples.

And one way that we know is that there's
so much interest in this on the part

of people who are left of
center. It's not just FOX News.

JEFFREY BROWN: You anticipated
another response, critical
response, of your book, which is:

The real danger is on the right. The
real danger is a threat to democracy.

It's a threat to voting rights.
It's banning books in schools.

Do you see those as real dangers?

JOHN MCWHORTER: They sure are, and
also the ones that I'm bringing up.

I think that the things going
on, on the left are real, just as
the things going on, on the right

are real. I am saying what I think most
enlightened people think, but that they're

worried about saying, because,
if you say it, you get called
a white supremacist on Twitter.

I don't care if somebody calls me a white

supremacist on Twitter. And
I'm going to keep writing.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right,
the book is "Woke Racism."

John McWhorter, thank you very much.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Thank you, Jeffrey.