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SubscribeSign inShare this postBlack fragility?johnmcwhorter.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 27, 2021Share this postBlack fragility?johnmcwhorter.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailLaw professor Jason Kilborn cited the N-word (and the B-word) on an exam thusly: n****, b****. It was in a question about an employment discrimination case. He has done so for years previously to no comment – as all reading this but a sliver would expect.But this year, a group of black students initiated a protest against him for harming them in exposing them to this expurgated rendition of the N-word. That is, in a class training them in litigation in the real world.One black student claimed that they experienced heart palpitations upon reading the words. During an hours-long Zoom talk with a black student representing the protesters, Kilborn made a flippant remark to the effect that the law school dean may suppose that he is some kind of “homicidal maniac” – upon which the student reported to the dean that Kilborn indeed may be one. Kilborn is no longer teaching the class, is relieved of his administrative duties, and because of the possible physical threat he poses to black students because of the Hyde-like tendency he referred to, he is barred from campus.The Good WifeLaw and OrderThe administrators who did this to Kilborn think they are being “allies” of black people. They have actually revealed themselves as neoracists.* * *A tragic thing about our times is that episodes like this are coming to seem almost normal. We shake our heads at the “excess” involved. Possibly we walk by with a quick glance, as on a highway passing a nasty car wreck. We mutter in a conversation about it that the issues are “complex.”But let’s pull the camera back, take a deep breath, and look at something like this pillorying of Kilborn with clear eyes. If a black student is traumatized to such a degree by seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, then that student needs psychological counseling. We all understand the history and power of the N-word, but we all also understand the simple issue of degree. That student who got heart palpitations needs help, and what the suits at the University of Illinois in Chicago should have done as gently direct this student to the proper services, which the school surely provides, for people who have fallen away from the ability to cope with normal life.Notice, though, that if we made this suggestion to such a student, the response would be appalled incredulity. We are to assume that the injury they suffered was normal, and that society is at fault. No matter how carefully we tried to explain that the world will never be as perfect as we might like, that we want this student to be able to thrive regardless, that there are techniques and procedures available to leave them less vulnerable to the imperfections inevitable in human interactions, and that we would salute them in a quest to parry attempts at injury with resilience and even disdain – we would be met with red-hot, uncomprehending fury from this student and their comrades.To be a modern enlightened American is to have internalized a kind of cognitive shunt or patch upon our processing of cases like this. We are to pretend that until slurs of this kind no longer exist, we must accept it as ordinary and perhaps even healthy for smart young people to fall to pieces at the mere of sight of one even in writing and carefully expurgated.na-gereligiouslyModern “antiracism” is neither a philosophy nor a political program: it is a religious creed, complete with priests, Original Sin, heresy, evangelism, and millenialism (although it hasn’t quite gotten to forgiveness yet). Jason Kilborn is not being disciplined. He is being stoned. His accusers and sanctioners are modern equivalents of the prelates who condemned Galileo to home arrest.* * *And in this light, I suspect that many readers can’t help thinking “But wait – isn’t he taking the students a little too seri…” – but whoops! We’re not supposed to go there. But folks, let’s. Because where we’re going is truth. Yes, I am taking the students too seriously. As in, I am only pretending to take them seriously at all. As all of us can detect on some level, black students who purport upset of this degree, at passing things that their very equivalents just some years ago never even noticed, are faking it. They are acting. It is a performance. The issue here is not “black fragility,” which is why there is a question mark after the title of this post. Such students are not fragile; they are histrionic. They are pretending to be hurt.“Snowflake” doesn’t work here, because, again, they are faking the delicacy. It also won’t do to just dismiss them as “children.” Law students, for one, are no longer children, and besides, this would imply that this kind of irrationality is normal even of children. What is rankling a five year old having a tantrum generally makes a great deal more sense than someone who has been alive for a quarter of a century claiming heart palpitations over reading “n*****” on an exam.shouldHowever, it is rash to process people like this as jerks. These students are acting this way out of the simple human temptation of the noble victim complex. This is a human personality type, but it can manifest itself in countless ways depending on circumstances. For a black person given to the temptation for any number of reasons, the handiest way of giving it vent is to exaggerate the extent to which racism affects you day to day. The formal expression is one of anger and injury, but behind this is a balm, the sense that you are worthy on some level of a cookie or a pat on the head just for getting through your days and weeks. It gives a person a sense of significance. It gives you a sense of significance as a member of a group on a fraught but epic trajectory towards justice. You, in times when civil rights can seem so much less dramatic a thing than it was 50 years ago and before, have a sense of being part of that “Struggle,” as it used to be put. That doesn’t make a person a monster.Yes, black people can be targeted as trespassers, public nuisances, or much worse simply on the basis of their skin color. However, this is by no means a daily experience for all black people in America, and a key part of human coping mechanisms is minimization. No healthy person, even one with a history in a people who were once enslaved and then endured Jim Crow, walks around ever in fear of vanishingly unlikely hideous things happening to them. Anyone who did is, we generally suppose, a candidate for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or the like, and this is most resonantly the case when someone shuts down in tears upon seeing “n*****” on an exam.Only with black people do we pretend that things are somehow different, and that expressions of incoherent (not to mention punitive) paranoia are evidence of enlightenment, morality and even intelligence.In our times, it may be hard to see past the idea that this kind of behavior from black students is somehow “understandable.” If you’re white you’re told you just “don’t know what it’s like,” for example. Amidst this racial reckoning, your job is to just stand by and watch.notlatahThe New York Timeslatahlatah* * *homicidalNone of this is to say that racism does not exist. However, it is most certainly to say that racism of the kind students like this claim is indeed a fantasy, and in all of the resonances of that word -- on a certain level students like this are enjoying themselves.One of the challenges our times level at us is that we must understand both the existence of, and legacies of, racism while also understanding that they, in the way that social history is always complex and quirky, have also made it so that a certain kind of black person will be given to exaggerating.That kind of person will, in all innocence, insist that they lead lives of endless racist abuse – although often so “subtle,” mind you, that they can’t quite get it across to people who haven’t “experienced” it. They will demand that innocent people’s careers be derailed because of it, that whole institutions upend their mission in order to become Maoesque Academies of Antiracism, that to question them in any way is to reveal oneself as a moral pervert.Indeed, to actually confront one of these bright and furious black people and say no, even politely, may seem a tort on some level, or perhaps even evil. But if you feel that way, you are like someone under Mao into whom the ideologies of the Cultural Revolution were gradually seeping. We must not fall under the illusion that black people lack the basic cognitive equipment and moral responsibility that all other people do. Specifically, we must be able to understand black people’s history in slavery and Jim Crow as well as redlining, to be appalled at the story of Henrietta Lacks, to comprehend that racism is something more than name-calling and prejudice, to worship the work of Viola Davis, to savor Amanda Gorman’s poem at President Biden’s inauguration – while also facing that when a black law student claims heart palpitations upon reading “n-----” in an exam question about a discrimination case, it is a performance, and must not be allowed to derail lives and careers.Protests of this kind test us on how committed we really are to assessing black people according to the content of their character. Normal people don’t fall to pieces when seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, regardless of their race. The neoracists who have barred Jason Kilborn from campus in pretending this isn’t true are operating upon an assumption that black people are morons. This is a rather fascinating rendition of “antiracism,” and to treat it as “allyship” is nothing less than a cultural sickness.Like this postShare this postBlack fragility?johnmcwhorter.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmail87 CommentsFor your security, we need to re-authenticate you.Click the link we sent to , or .Expand full commentExpand full commentNo posts© 2022 John McWhorter ∙ ∙ &nbsp;is the home for great writingThis site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please or unblock scripts

SubscribeSign inShare this postBlack fragility?johnmcwhorter.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailJan 27, 2021Share this postBlack fragility?johnmcwhorter.substack.comCopy linkTwitterFacebookEmailLaw professor Jason Kilborn cited the N-word (and the B-word) on an exam thusly: n****, b****. It was in a question about an employment discrimination case. He has done so for years previously to no comment – as all reading this but a sliver would expect.But this year, a group of black students initiated a protest against him for harming them in exposing them to this expurgated rendition of the...

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John McWhorter teaches linguistics and music history at Columbia University, hosts Slate’s Lexicon Valley podcast, and is Contributing Editor at the Atlantic.

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