John McWhorter On Accusations That *Hamilton* Is Racist
Well, McWhorter's great.
Ditto "Hamilton"--of course I haven't seen it, because...who can afford that? But I've heard the soundtrack, naturally.
And I think McWhorter's right about this.
I had expected this to be some nonsense about it somehow being racist for all the performers to be black...though I wasn't sure that all the performers were black...which, as it turns out, I guess they're not. But anyway, no. It's from the other side--the possibility of which I guess I should have foreseen--and the charge is that it's racist because it doesn't focus on slavery. And McWhorter's response is pretty much right, I'd say on one read. Slavery was an almost incomprehensible crime...but even it can't always be the main focus of our attention, even when we are focused on the time period. Also, I think Hamilton's egalitarian cred is pretty much unassailable... Also, you just can't do everything at once.
That's all I got.
Ditto "Hamilton"--of course I haven't seen it, because...who can afford that? But I've heard the soundtrack, naturally.
And I think McWhorter's right about this.
I had expected this to be some nonsense about it somehow being racist for all the performers to be black...though I wasn't sure that all the performers were black...which, as it turns out, I guess they're not. But anyway, no. It's from the other side--the possibility of which I guess I should have foreseen--and the charge is that it's racist because it doesn't focus on slavery. And McWhorter's response is pretty much right, I'd say on one read. Slavery was an almost incomprehensible crime...but even it can't always be the main focus of our attention, even when we are focused on the time period. Also, I think Hamilton's egalitarian cred is pretty much unassailable... Also, you just can't do everything at once.
That's all I got.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:39 PM
4 Comments:
I've seen that other claim made too, more than once: that Miranda is racist by going out of his way to hire minorities in the performance. All you have to do is to post regularly to a mostly-conservative web forum to see it. (I finally got kicked off when I went ballistic--which is to say, dropped the N-bomb-- over someone who posted some minstrelsy doggerel about "kicking Dems." I was trying to point out, in the most brutal way possible, that minstrelsy is pretty much, well, racist.
But yes, the claim from the left is silly, too.
Yeah, I figured, us being us, it *had* to be out there somewhere.
Impressive work with the off-kicking...
I myself got kicked off the Inside Carolina off-topic (i.e. non-sports) discussion board back in '08. At the time, it was actually often pretty good, largely because it was at least somewhat balanced between liberals and conservatives...though both sides had their kooks. One morning, after almost no sleep for most of a week, I woke up to find one of the nutty righties with *yet another utterly irrational* anti-Obama post and I flipped my shit. One of those comments where, halfway through, you're like *fuck it, since I'm going to get banned anyway, I might as well go for the gold.*
I got un-banned a couple of years ago...but in the interim, the ZZL had been almost entirely taken over by a group of the mindless far lefties. And wow are those guys nuts. They're to brutal to the few conservatives that remain that it's given me additional pause about the character of the left, I have to say. Some of the nuttiest of the conservatives are gone, as are some of the sanest and smartest ones. And those who aren't gone seem to just keep their heads down.
Unified Theory on why radical lefties may seem more annoying than the right. On the one hand, they are supposed to agree with me. On the other, I expect my ideological opponent to believe all sorts of silly things.
IIRC, McWhorter has a new book out.
Probably worth checking out.
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