John McWhorter Claims He Is Real...

One more reason not to read the New Republic is that you run into people like John McWhorter. Here he asserts that he is "real." In my experience, people who feel they have to assert their reality are the fakest of all. And so it proves with McWhorter:

Open University: August Wilson's... Radio Golf... with the message that to the extent that black people assimilate to white culture, they are losing their true "selves."... I think I understand where Wilson was coming from. He grew up in the days of Jim Crow, when a black identity was not something to be chosen, nurtured and custom-fitted the way it is now.... [I]t is really unclear to me that black Americans will be the only humans in history to never heal. I don't see the logic in it.

I, for one, feel thoroughly "real."... Yes, my wife is white. However, she sure looks real to me.... I do not accept that the life I lead is unreal, inauthentic, or broken.... Life isn't perfect, but we're making it. We're getting over, and in the process, getting over it. Wilson doesn't want us to get over it.... That might float some people's boats, but I am more interested in feeling whole right here and now. History is important--but not so much...

John McWhorter claims he is real. I say that he is fake. Here is one example: John McWhorter defending former Senator George Allen:

Similar insincerity is evident in the reaction to Allen and the macaca episode . . . . Imagine for a moment that Allen actually knew that a "macaque" is a kind of monkey, or that in French the term is sometimes used as an insult for North Africans (Allen denied having known about either). Who, then, believes that Allen would use the slur against an opposition campaigner aiming a camera straight at him? The facts of the case would suggest that Allen just made up something silly on the spot...

I say this is fake. John McWhorter was saying something he doesn't believe--that George Allen was smart enough not to behave stupidly--because no other African-American was defending George Allen. McWhorter hoped to make himself a rare and valuable commodity in the event that Allen were to have survived his close encounter with the macaques: the only prominent African-American to have taken Allen's side. A little racial arbitrage here. But behaving like this doesn't make McWhorter "real."

Here is another example:

[T]he diversity fetish leads to excusing other cultures for destructive behaviors we would condemn in our own... (witness the tendency to designate Osama Bin Laden a "madman," implying that this sane, calculating person is not responsible for his actions, whereas Dick Cheney is afforded no such exemption from sincere, visceral contempt)...

Nobody I know (and I know many) who calls Osama bin Laden a "madman" is excusing him--they are, rather, saying that we should have long since put enough resources into the search to find him and shoot him down like a dog. Nobody I know (and I know many) who calls Dick Cheney a "madman" is exempting him from contempt--indeed, their contempt is roughly double that of those who do not call Cheney a "madman." A little neoconservative arbitrage here: McWhorter is declaring his allegiance to Cheney and asserting that his opponents (the followers of the "diversity fetish") are in some ways pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Once again: fake. Behaving like this makes McWhorter less real than ever.