John McWhorter – Rejecting the Tokenism of "Diversity"

John McWhorter is back again for the latest installment in our ongoing, nearly decade-and-a-half-long conversation. Let’s get into it. John starts out telling us about his current whereabouts: a Dirty Dancing-style bungalow in the Catskills. We move on to a developing story out of Princeton, New Jersey, where a group of parents has written an open letter protesting the school district’s “dumbing down” of the math curriculum in the name of DEI. John and I are on the same page on this one: How much longer are we going to pretend that this is doing any good for the students? The way that the Princeton school district went about implementing these curriculum standards was, at best, deceptive. Don’t parents have the right to know how decisions that affect their kids are being made? Of course, DEI is a business, one that has created thousands of jobs for administrators and consultants who spend their days rooting out racism. And as John points out, if someone’s job depends on finding instances of racism, they’re going to “find racism,” whether it’s really there or not. This incentive structure makes John despair. He also suggests that my theory of social capital may provide the conceptual underpinnings for some present-day arguments in favor of affirmative action. But I point out that, while social capital may partially explain disparities in outcome, it doesn’t excuse disparities in outcome. After all, we can see that, some historically disadvantaged groups regularly over-perform when high academic performance is incentivized within their community. But incentives for middling academic performance tend to produce middling academic performance, and I fear that we’re incentivizing middling academic performance in our young black students. Is there a way out of this mess? Is John right to despair? I close on a note of hope from my Brown University and Heterodox Academy colleague John Tomasi. This post is free and available to the public. To receive early access to TGS episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, Q&As, and other exclusive content and benefits, click below. 0:00 John reports on his rustic Catskills bungalow 2:40 Parents protest Princeton public schools “dumbing down” their math curriculum  17:11 How much educational transparency is owed to parents?  25:07 How many DEI initiatives and administrators do we actually need?  33:50 John: I don’t think we can fix what’s broken in DEI 40:49 Glenn’s theory of social capital may explain (but does not excuse) some disparities 48:56 Cultures of achievement vs. disincentive effects of affirmative action 58:19 What do we know about what kids know about the world?  1:04:46 Glenn offers some reason for hope from John TomasiLinks and ReadingsJohn’s NYT piece, “Sometimes ‘Proper’ Speech Isn’t Correct Speech”The open letter from Princeton, New Jersey parentsBard College at Simon’s RockJohn’s book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black AmericaJennifer Lee and Min Zhou’s book, The Asian American Achievement Paradox This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit glennloury.substack.com/subscribe