Thursday, July 7, 2022

The Price of an Unpopular Argument

It's Glenn Loury's introduction to the video below:

Thousands of hours of new race-related content pop up every day on cable news, talk radio, podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube. If you’re tired of hearing partisan left-right talking head punditry, the digital democratization of the media has made pretty much any point of view on race in America—from the benign to the malignant—available to you, if you do a little digging.

On The Glenn Show, I often say things that I nevertheless categorize as “unsayable.” But I haven’t been booted off Twitter (at least not yet). I haven’t been fired or jailed for anything I’ve said. People have gotten mad and said disparaging things about me in public, but that’s their right. So why does it feel like there are certain things “one can’t say” about race?

Violating the progressive line on race can have less easily definable social and professional costs than a Twitter ban or the FBI knocking on your door. As John McWhorter points out in the following excerpt from our recent live event at the Comedy Store, simply stating the facts about crime and racial disparities can lead people to look askance at you or cut you off entirely, to regard you as politically untrustworthy or disreputable. To insist, as I do below, that the out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is a scandal can invite the same response.

There is every reason in the world to ignore an unpopular argument...

 

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