Workin’ for the Weekend #12: Stelter Fired, Moynihan on FIRE, Kmele Gonna Take You Higher

When it comes to thinking about race and identity, Kmele is something of a radical, though not in the way that many “antiracist” ideologues consider themselves radicals. As you’ll see below in this transcript of my appearance with John on The Fifth Column, Kmele rejects race as a category that need have any bearing on an individual’s self-conception.

 

I find Kmele’s way of thinking about these matters intriguing, though I have to admit I worry that he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In Tuesday’s post, I argued while we should not allow ourselves to become prisoners to socially legislated identities, neither should we discard communal traditions from which we may draw sustenance and strength. Kmele says he doesn’t think it valid to feel personal pride or shame about even our parents’ and grandparents’ actions, whereas I confess that there are many aspects of my own black heritage of which I am quite proud.

 

These are deep disagreements but productive ones. We need radical thinkers like Kmele who take up positions that cut against the orthodoxies of both right and left.

* In other Kmele news, Adweek awarded an Open to Debate formerly known as Intelligence Squared U.S. debate on cancel culture that the Freethinker participated in as its “Best Podcast Event of 2022”:

 

To shed light on a topic commanding the zeitgeist, Intelligence Squared US Debates provided a platform for healthy debate on cancel culture and the impact it may have in dividing Americans across the country at its November 2021 event. Reaching more than 200,000 unique listeners, the live event brought together widely respected thinkers who didn’t simply pander to partisan allegiances, but endeavored to share their point of view in hopes of arriving at a clearer understanding of the phenomenon.