Harper’s “A letter on justice and open debate” is criticized by some of the narrow-minded ideologues targeted

The Objective criticizes Harper’s “letter”:

1. Harper’s is “a prominent magazine that’s infamous.” “The signatories [include those who are] white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms … even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.”

2. “Nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.”

3. “The content of the letter also does not deal with the problem of power: who has it and who does not.”

4. The authors avoid “The ongoing debate about who gets to have a platform.”

5. “‘Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class.’”  “Laurie Sheck, who said the N-word when referencing a James Baldwin piece in class.” The Objective implies she wasn’t punished, therefore this is a bogus issue. In fact, it was made an issue;(1) and though she wasn’t fired, many others have been fired on the same grounds.

6. “The heads of organizations are ousted for what are just clumsy mistakes?” John McWhorter cites many such instances in Woke Racism, for example, the person who strongly supports Black Lives Matter, but made the mistake of noting the universal liberal principle that all lives matter as well, in passing.

What’s wrong with this stuff? First, it’s an example of the people being rightly criticized objecting to their critics for not writing about their issues. It’s like criticizing an article objecting to high taxes for not writing about how the government needs to spend more. Wokeness is a current ideology - a set of dogmas which seeks to dictate what everyone else should believe and say and do. That’s not compatible with “open debate,” so they fault a critique for 1. having massive “platforms”; 2. not addressing marginalization; 3. not addressing “the problem of power”; 4. not addressing “who gets to have a platform”.

5. and 6. They dismiss the problem of Woke taboos’ hampering open debate.

I call ideology “the restriction of thought, language, and truth in the service of power.” Usually the power of a self-aggrandizing group or faction. As such, ideology is a mere belief system (“thank you for speaking ‘our’ truth”), and a much better option is an information system, such as liberalism throughout the ages.

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(1)“The Idea That Whites Can’t Refer to the N-Word”

Linguist John McWhorter rightly names this: It’s a taboo. I cite his article because of Orwell’s warning about the deadly effects of taboos, below. “Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind.”

McWhorter: “Laurie Sheck is a professor of creative writing at the New School in New York, a decades-long veteran of the classroom, a widely published novelist and essayist, and a Pulitzer nominee. She’s also spent the summer in trouble with her bosses for possibly being a racist.”

“Early last spring semester, Sheck, who is white, was teaching a graduate seminar on [James] Baldwin, and one of the questions she posed for discussion was why the documentary title had substituted “Negro” for [the n-word.]”

“A white student in the class objected to Sheck’s having uttered the word. And administrators were apparently dissatisfied with Sheck’s attempt to defend herself, because the school put her under investigation, while directing her to reacquaint herself with the school’s rules about discrimination. This month the school determined that Sheck had committed no offense. But the fact that smart, busy people felt it necessary to investigate Sheck for mouthing the word when referring to it—not using it independently, much less directing it at someone—suggests a preoccupation less with matters of morality than with matters of taboo.”