This was a masterful and refreshing article by John Washington! Thank you, sir, for this crucial and timely piece that ought to be in the New York Times or Washington Post instead of race hustlers like Nikki Hannah-Jones, Wesley Morris and Charles Blow. They are just the kind of people he talks about in this article. Black Democratic politicians, "civil rights" leaders, celebrities, organizations, and media all encourage black cultural separatism. Left-wing and leftist activists resist integrating black Americans into the broader American mainstream tooth and nail. But as Mr. Washington shows through masterfully applying the concept of the collective brain from Joseph Conrad's book The Secret of Success from 2015, this is a serious mistake and is counterproductive for the black community in America. The Euro-American collective brain is wildly successful, and the West is culturally predominant around the globe. Why is this the case? Simple, it's because the West has gained an immense amount of knowledge both from its own people of all races and other cultures around the world.
This is why the West is the wealthiest and most successful part of the world, it is the best place on Earth to live, and its culture predominate. However, due to the historic injustices committed against black Americans such as slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, lynchings, medical experiments, red lining, being denied loans by banks, violence from vigilante groups like the KKK and the White League, and horrific massacres like the one that most infamously occurred in Tulsa in 1921, many in the black community understandably perceive the Euro-American collective brain as hostile and closed to them. So, they in turn never leave the confines of black culture or even revert to the cultural isolation of the past. But this is a major mistake that has always disadvantaged them and the race as a whole. Some black leaders and intellectuals see the gains of the Civil Rights Movement as inauthentic, miniscule and meaningless. They see it as erasing black culture and replacing it with a Euro-centric framework.
The constant revisiting and lamenting of historical injustices and pretending that they are present realities when they in fact died off a long time ago doesn't help matters either. Others retain the same segregation-era mindset and absolutely refuse to move forward one step believing nothing has changed and it never will because white racism in America is intractable. Again, I can understand why they think that way. Mr. Washington himself used to have aspects of this hesitancy himself. It took time for him and many other black people to feel comfortable in desegregated spaces given the conditioning they had been going through for years. Adjusting to the new reality of integration took time. It doesn't help terribly that the race grievance industry in this country that was born in the 1960s and goes on strong well into present day, continues to fan the flames of the irrational fear of a return to the past and touting the boogeyman of white racism as an inescapable, omnipresent force all while making a handsome profit from it.
It is VERY unhelpful that race hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Bryan Stevenson, Jane Elliott, Peggy MacIntosh, Dr. Cornel West, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Marc Lamont Hill among others and pc pressure groups like the NAACP, BLM, the Urban League, etc. continue to promote this idea that racism is solely responsible for the woes of black America. But this blatantly not true. Racism is to be sure, a factor in many societal issues. But it is not the sole cause of ails black America. If one wants to cure a disease, the doctor needs to know ALL its causes. 70% of black children are born into single-parent households, 45% of black children have no father, 50% of prison inmates are black, some of the highest crime rates in the nation are in black communities, black on black crime is at epidemic proportions, the vast majority of black students can't pass the ACT and will drop out of college, antisemitism is rampant within the black community, and black children and young people who are studious are often accused of "acting white" by their peers and successful black people get derided as sellouts.
Black cultural separatism is sadly rampant and is something I sadly have encountered on a number of occasions from both black and non-black people. I'll give a couple of examples. I was watching a Michael Douglas film and in it a white and black detective are talking to each other and the former offers the latter tickets to a Bruce Springsteen show. He responds, "do I look white to you?" Second, when in the TV show Kojak, a black policeman and his old friend from the old neighborhood are talking to each other and he accuses him of being a "white man in blackface" who "sold out." These sentiments didn't emerge out of thin air. They are based on reality as many black people think this way. Such as Mr. Washington's encounter with a black woman who assumed he was white because he drove a Jeep Wrangler. It's high time for greater black integration into the Euro-American collective brain while also preserving the unique black American subculture.
To add: if historical gripes are the premise of today's endless race hustling and self pitying, its slightly awkward, should anybody ever bother to look it up, the history of West African kingdoms, tribes, slavers, chiefs and the rest, all of whom were in constant conflict, competing for resources, commerce, including people, the day before any European stumbled upon them, and the century prior, and for a millenium, not to even mention the multi million Arab slave trade in Africa. This utopian past, this 'if only' historical myth is as delusional as the present day grievance myth.
I'm a black person. Ok, I'm not, but I hope in a democracy I might get to comment nonetheless:
25 years of teaching now, and living, and I would say 5% of black students care of, know of, think of anything from Mozart to The Beatles, well to Beck or Black Sabbath. Just the same old hip hop, endless tropes of repetition and very little of literary note.
To that, reading the canon? Yes I recall we used to say in the 90s, lets not just teach white males, but boy I didn't expect they would be discarded. Yes, Chaucer to Orwell, all racist and sexist dirge. Lets skip it for Ibram Kendis pity party of inventions.
On top of which, black culture since the 90s has raised two generations of kids to feel sorry for themselves, to be angry (which seemed apt from Grandmaster Flash to NWA, to energize, to actualize, but to make it your whole identity?) What are the chances of success in life when its one long ahistorical, culturally inept whine? When invisible 'structures' are holding you down. But don't hold down Chinese or Korean or Caribbean or Armenians?
To add, art? drama? ballet? opera? All white supremacist I suppose. Not enough black characters. As if you have to see your own skin color to appreciate something? If that were the case I would rarely go out. All lacking in interest from black Americans.
Not so in Europe or elsewhere. Its here. It started with Black Power. It has now become a curse far greater than any vestiges of 1950s racism. Its now self inflicted. And it comes from black cultural elites. Start with Kendi. Then Coates, and every teacher I ever met who was black: all committed to crying a river instead of navigating one.
As a rule don't teach young people to blame or give up. Thats what has happened since the 90s.
T Chatterton Williams, Glenn Loury, etc etc, and this author: this is the way forward.
Black people overcame hell in the US and succeeded through to the 90s. Since then, at a time its never been easier to be black, the world is somehow eternal oppression. Baffling.
A suggestion for the future. There are a lot of people in this country who claim nothing has changed with regard to race. A writer in his eighties is well situated to lay out just how mistaken they are.
What a wonderful and deeply thoughtful piece! I was certain that it had been written by a college professor and was accordingly blown away by Mr. Washington's bio. I would only add that Mr. Washington's analysis applies in all directions: white folks who write off Black American (sub)-culture are only harming themselves.
Thank you for the common sense that prevails in your essay. Victimhood and isolation don’t work for anyone. As a woman who dealt with all kinds of sexism in my long career, i never dwelled on it or let it hold me back. My brother taught me to be tough.
I enjoyed this essay, my first read this morning. As I read your piece, I kept wondering "where does the writer live?" You see, I believe there is a topography to race. I have encountered self-limiting values and attitudes in real life but mostly from black women on the East Coast. For years when our children were young, we drove a green Volvo station wagon straight out of central casting from The Preppy Handbook. Never a random racial remark heard in our 6% black West Coast town.
Mr. Washington. Thanks for your interesting perspectives, which I can agree with completely. I would like to add a couple of additional thoughts.
I believe that the attitudes of blacks that you seem to disagree with are not accidental, but largely the result of intentional efforts to indoctrinate people into Critical Social Justice and related ideologies. The indoctrination process is widespread in schools and other institutions. Students are indoctrinated without their knowledge, i.e. they are taught many things simply as truth or fact, that are just an interpretation of reality that results from filtering all data, thinking, and logic through an ideological/worldview filter such that the only acceptable interpretations are those that match the ideology. I believe that in many cases the teachers themselves have been indoctrinated themselves without their knowledge and are simply passing on the “truths” they learned. Indoctrination has negative effects on many. For example, in her You Tube videos and written materials on FBT etc, Kimi Katti describes both being indoctrinated without her knowledge at College in California, and the massive negative effects that lasted until she figured out it was false.
I agree with most of this, and would only urge you to question your describing mainstream American culture as "European". It is, by now, a real melting pot that includes many of us descended from Asians, as well as "Latinos" distinguishable only by their facial features and Spanish surname. It's just mainstream American culture, a mainstream that black immigrants are often happy to join. ADOS culture is one large subculture separate from that mainstream, like the smaller subcultures in Brooklyn of white people who only speak Russian.
It’s still mainly European culture. South America is heavily influenced by its Spanish and Portugese history. You would recognize that if you visit those countries in Europe.
Huzzah! Well said!! And you want to know something mind-blowing? I believe you are part of the silent majority. What distinguishes you is that you say the silent part aloud.
What an essay! Appreciate the thoughtfulness and insight from someone who has “seen it all” and recognizes where we fall short. We need more discussions like this. 🙏🏾❤️👊🏾🙌🏾👏🏾
Mr. Washington, thank you for your service and also sharing your impressions about black culture.
And thank you.
You are 100% right. Thank you!
Thank you.
This was a masterful and refreshing article by John Washington! Thank you, sir, for this crucial and timely piece that ought to be in the New York Times or Washington Post instead of race hustlers like Nikki Hannah-Jones, Wesley Morris and Charles Blow. They are just the kind of people he talks about in this article. Black Democratic politicians, "civil rights" leaders, celebrities, organizations, and media all encourage black cultural separatism. Left-wing and leftist activists resist integrating black Americans into the broader American mainstream tooth and nail. But as Mr. Washington shows through masterfully applying the concept of the collective brain from Joseph Conrad's book The Secret of Success from 2015, this is a serious mistake and is counterproductive for the black community in America. The Euro-American collective brain is wildly successful, and the West is culturally predominant around the globe. Why is this the case? Simple, it's because the West has gained an immense amount of knowledge both from its own people of all races and other cultures around the world.
This is why the West is the wealthiest and most successful part of the world, it is the best place on Earth to live, and its culture predominate. However, due to the historic injustices committed against black Americans such as slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, lynchings, medical experiments, red lining, being denied loans by banks, violence from vigilante groups like the KKK and the White League, and horrific massacres like the one that most infamously occurred in Tulsa in 1921, many in the black community understandably perceive the Euro-American collective brain as hostile and closed to them. So, they in turn never leave the confines of black culture or even revert to the cultural isolation of the past. But this is a major mistake that has always disadvantaged them and the race as a whole. Some black leaders and intellectuals see the gains of the Civil Rights Movement as inauthentic, miniscule and meaningless. They see it as erasing black culture and replacing it with a Euro-centric framework.
The constant revisiting and lamenting of historical injustices and pretending that they are present realities when they in fact died off a long time ago doesn't help matters either. Others retain the same segregation-era mindset and absolutely refuse to move forward one step believing nothing has changed and it never will because white racism in America is intractable. Again, I can understand why they think that way. Mr. Washington himself used to have aspects of this hesitancy himself. It took time for him and many other black people to feel comfortable in desegregated spaces given the conditioning they had been going through for years. Adjusting to the new reality of integration took time. It doesn't help terribly that the race grievance industry in this country that was born in the 1960s and goes on strong well into present day, continues to fan the flames of the irrational fear of a return to the past and touting the boogeyman of white racism as an inescapable, omnipresent force all while making a handsome profit from it.
It is VERY unhelpful that race hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Bryan Stevenson, Jane Elliott, Peggy MacIntosh, Dr. Cornel West, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Marc Lamont Hill among others and pc pressure groups like the NAACP, BLM, the Urban League, etc. continue to promote this idea that racism is solely responsible for the woes of black America. But this blatantly not true. Racism is to be sure, a factor in many societal issues. But it is not the sole cause of ails black America. If one wants to cure a disease, the doctor needs to know ALL its causes. 70% of black children are born into single-parent households, 45% of black children have no father, 50% of prison inmates are black, some of the highest crime rates in the nation are in black communities, black on black crime is at epidemic proportions, the vast majority of black students can't pass the ACT and will drop out of college, antisemitism is rampant within the black community, and black children and young people who are studious are often accused of "acting white" by their peers and successful black people get derided as sellouts.
Black cultural separatism is sadly rampant and is something I sadly have encountered on a number of occasions from both black and non-black people. I'll give a couple of examples. I was watching a Michael Douglas film and in it a white and black detective are talking to each other and the former offers the latter tickets to a Bruce Springsteen show. He responds, "do I look white to you?" Second, when in the TV show Kojak, a black policeman and his old friend from the old neighborhood are talking to each other and he accuses him of being a "white man in blackface" who "sold out." These sentiments didn't emerge out of thin air. They are based on reality as many black people think this way. Such as Mr. Washington's encounter with a black woman who assumed he was white because he drove a Jeep Wrangler. It's high time for greater black integration into the Euro-American collective brain while also preserving the unique black American subculture.
To add: if historical gripes are the premise of today's endless race hustling and self pitying, its slightly awkward, should anybody ever bother to look it up, the history of West African kingdoms, tribes, slavers, chiefs and the rest, all of whom were in constant conflict, competing for resources, commerce, including people, the day before any European stumbled upon them, and the century prior, and for a millenium, not to even mention the multi million Arab slave trade in Africa. This utopian past, this 'if only' historical myth is as delusional as the present day grievance myth.
Thank you.
Wow! Your response is own par with the original, exemplary essay. Well done! 👏🏾 Might you consider writing a Substack?
Thank you. Just got an invite from FBT.
I'm a black person. Ok, I'm not, but I hope in a democracy I might get to comment nonetheless:
25 years of teaching now, and living, and I would say 5% of black students care of, know of, think of anything from Mozart to The Beatles, well to Beck or Black Sabbath. Just the same old hip hop, endless tropes of repetition and very little of literary note.
To that, reading the canon? Yes I recall we used to say in the 90s, lets not just teach white males, but boy I didn't expect they would be discarded. Yes, Chaucer to Orwell, all racist and sexist dirge. Lets skip it for Ibram Kendis pity party of inventions.
On top of which, black culture since the 90s has raised two generations of kids to feel sorry for themselves, to be angry (which seemed apt from Grandmaster Flash to NWA, to energize, to actualize, but to make it your whole identity?) What are the chances of success in life when its one long ahistorical, culturally inept whine? When invisible 'structures' are holding you down. But don't hold down Chinese or Korean or Caribbean or Armenians?
To add, art? drama? ballet? opera? All white supremacist I suppose. Not enough black characters. As if you have to see your own skin color to appreciate something? If that were the case I would rarely go out. All lacking in interest from black Americans.
Not so in Europe or elsewhere. Its here. It started with Black Power. It has now become a curse far greater than any vestiges of 1950s racism. Its now self inflicted. And it comes from black cultural elites. Start with Kendi. Then Coates, and every teacher I ever met who was black: all committed to crying a river instead of navigating one.
As a rule don't teach young people to blame or give up. Thats what has happened since the 90s.
T Chatterton Williams, Glenn Loury, etc etc, and this author: this is the way forward.
Black people overcame hell in the US and succeeded through to the 90s. Since then, at a time its never been easier to be black, the world is somehow eternal oppression. Baffling.
Right on target! This is not the black race of my youth, but we will reach critical mass and return.
I actually love that conclusion. The change to come is the key. It can, and must, come.
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾!!
Well written, with some harsh truths. I love this line: “What are your chances in life when it’s one long ahistorical, culturally inept whine?”
On target. Thank you.
A suggestion for the future. There are a lot of people in this country who claim nothing has changed with regard to race. A writer in his eighties is well situated to lay out just how mistaken they are.
You got it. My contextual field of the Jim Crow South tells me that we are now in the Promised Land, but we don't see it. Thank you.
Great suggestion!
What a wonderful and deeply thoughtful piece! I was certain that it had been written by a college professor and was accordingly blown away by Mr. Washington's bio. I would only add that Mr. Washington's analysis applies in all directions: white folks who write off Black American (sub)-culture are only harming themselves.
Thank you.
Thank you for your essay, Mr. Washington. I found it an inspiring and accurate read.
And thank you.
Thank you for the common sense that prevails in your essay. Victimhood and isolation don’t work for anyone. As a woman who dealt with all kinds of sexism in my long career, i never dwelled on it or let it hold me back. My brother taught me to be tough.
Exactly! Thank you.
I truly appreciate your insights in this matter, and welcome the possibility of creating further racial harmony in our culture.
Thank you.
I enjoyed this essay, my first read this morning. As I read your piece, I kept wondering "where does the writer live?" You see, I believe there is a topography to race. I have encountered self-limiting values and attitudes in real life but mostly from black women on the East Coast. For years when our children were young, we drove a green Volvo station wagon straight out of central casting from The Preppy Handbook. Never a random racial remark heard in our 6% black West Coast town.
Please write more about engaging the larger world. Your insights are sorely needed. https://twyman.substack.com/p/the-black-privilege-vibe?utm_source=publication-search
https://twyman.substack.com/p/another-race-moment?utm_source=publication-search
Exactly! Thank you.
Mr. Washington. Thanks for your interesting perspectives, which I can agree with completely. I would like to add a couple of additional thoughts.
I believe that the attitudes of blacks that you seem to disagree with are not accidental, but largely the result of intentional efforts to indoctrinate people into Critical Social Justice and related ideologies. The indoctrination process is widespread in schools and other institutions. Students are indoctrinated without their knowledge, i.e. they are taught many things simply as truth or fact, that are just an interpretation of reality that results from filtering all data, thinking, and logic through an ideological/worldview filter such that the only acceptable interpretations are those that match the ideology. I believe that in many cases the teachers themselves have been indoctrinated themselves without their knowledge and are simply passing on the “truths” they learned. Indoctrination has negative effects on many. For example, in her You Tube videos and written materials on FBT etc, Kimi Katti describes both being indoctrinated without her knowledge at College in California, and the massive negative effects that lasted until she figured out it was false.
Agreed! That is just part of what I rage about. Thank you.
I agree with most of this, and would only urge you to question your describing mainstream American culture as "European". It is, by now, a real melting pot that includes many of us descended from Asians, as well as "Latinos" distinguishable only by their facial features and Spanish surname. It's just mainstream American culture, a mainstream that black immigrants are often happy to join. ADOS culture is one large subculture separate from that mainstream, like the smaller subcultures in Brooklyn of white people who only speak Russian.
Good point! Thank you. I was being too general.
It’s still mainly European culture. South America is heavily influenced by its Spanish and Portugese history. You would recognize that if you visit those countries in Europe.
Huzzah! Well said!! And you want to know something mind-blowing? I believe you are part of the silent majority. What distinguishes you is that you say the silent part aloud.
But we are going to reach critical mass. Thank you.
Glad to see another Henrich reader/listener in the community. I would agree that integration of various minds and cultures is the right way forward.
Thank you.
What an essay! Appreciate the thoughtfulness and insight from someone who has “seen it all” and recognizes where we fall short. We need more discussions like this. 🙏🏾❤️👊🏾🙌🏾👏🏾
You will see more. Some of us are trying to reach critical mass on this and will do so.
Excellent! I will lend my (somewhat) timid voice as well. We can't keep silent.
Great essay, important perspective that can and should be considered both broadly and in small, minute ways. And very succinctly put - Thank you!
And thank you.