The "Right Kind" of Black Person: Erec Smith on prescriptive racism.

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is with one of our guest speakers at The Unspeakeasy retreat in Chicago. If you’re interested in going, learn more here.

This week Meghan welcomes returning guest Erec Smith. He is an academic whose area of scholarship is Rhetoric, but he also writes and speaks frequently about the state of race politics in America, particularly the perils (and uses) of DEI. In this conversation, they talk about the concept of prescriptive racism, which Erec wrote about in a recent Boston Globe column, and ask whether the emergence of the concept of microaggressions has resulted mainly in people steering clear of one another.

They also discuss what’s happened on college campuses since Erec was on the podcast a year ago, including the ouster of college presidents like Harvard’s Claudine Gay and U Penn’s Liz Magill over free speech policies. He also discusses what he was like as a college student carrying around a copy of Emerson’s Self-Reliance and how he would have felt if he’d been told that he was living under the thumb of white supremacy.

Erec will be a guest speaker at the first-ever Unspeakeasy coed retreat in Chicago on June 4-5. We’ll also be joined by recent Unspeakable guests Nadine Strossen and Lisa Selin Davis. To find out about that go to theunspeakeasy.com.)

Make sure you listen all the way to the end, so you can hear an excerpt from Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist from the Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q. (Probably not coming to a high school theater near you.)

GUEST BIO

Erec Smith is a professor of rhetoric at York College of PA, a research scholar at the Cato Insitute, and a co-founder and an editor at Free Black Thought.

Read Erec’s recent Boston Globe column on prescriptive racism.

Listen to the last time he was on the podcast.

Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.

HOUSEKEEPING

✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you are a successful and happy and fulfilled black person with a positive self-regard
0:09.8	and a modicum of self-reliance, you're not beneficial to the left.
0:15.6	You're invisible, right?
0:17.6	Because you can't be told, well, if you vote for us, we'll make sure the races don't get you.
0:23.0	I think people are waking up to the fact that that's a load of crap.
0:28.7	Welcome to the Unspeakable Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom. This week, I welcome returning guest,
0:34.5	Eric Smith. Eric is an academic whose area of scholarship is rhetoric,
0:39.4	but he also does a lot of writing and talking about the state of race politics in America,
0:44.2	the perils and uses of DEI, and he's just generally very good at offering a reality check on
0:50.9	things while also being rigorous and very honest in his thinking. In this conversation,
0:56.1	we talk about, among other things, the concept of prescriptive racism, which Eric wrote about in a
1:02.2	recent Boston Globe column. We also discussed what's happened on college campuses since he was last
1:07.7	here, about a year ago, including the ouster of college presidents,
1:11.4	including Harvard's Claudine Gay over free speech politics.
1:15.1	We also discuss how the emergence of the concept of microaggressions have resulted mainly,
1:21.0	and really perhaps more than anything, in people steering clear of one another.
1:26.3	Eric will be a guest speaker at our first ever co-ed unspeak-easy retreat in Chicago,
1:31.8	June 4th, and 5th.
1:33.3	That is also true of my last two guests, Nadine Strausson, and Lisa Salland Davis.
1:37.8	They will all be guest speakers.
1:39.5	So to find out more about that, go to the unspeakeasy.com.
1:43.5	In the meantime, please enjoy this conversation
	...

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