In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I examine Ronald Lindsay’s new book about identity politics. It’s probably the best such book that’s come out so far—written with a degree of patience and calm that I doubt I could manage if I were writing such a book. Here’s an excerpt from my review:
The irrationality of some parties in today’s political and cultural disputes—especially those involving race—is now so overwhelming that anyone trying to make sense of their arguments might feel paralyzed. In fact, the very idea of “making sense” is considered racist in certain circles: In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution published a document asserting that “objective, rational linear thinking” is a manifestation of “white supremacy” (21). And physicist Chand Prescod-Weinstein has condemned “white empiricism” as a form of “epistemic oppression.”
Many of America’s major institutions, from colleges to corporations to government agencies, have likewise embraced the premise that the United States is “systemically racist” and that all good people should direct their energies to “disrupting” the alleged “oppression” of “white society”—which, of course, means the remaining elements of capitalism in today’s mixed economy. To question this orthodoxy—or even, in some cases, to agree with it—is grounds for termination, humiliation, and “cancellation.”
Amid such intellectual gloom, it’s refreshing to find a clear light of reason in Ronald Lindsay’s Against the New Politics of Identity.
Comments policy