Questioning the Language of Solidarity
“In a broader sense, I know what happened to Iishea Stone: a luminous and extraordinary woman was failed repeatedly — by her family’s pathologies, by poverty, and by a social safety net that couldn’t seem to catch her, Had Iishea grown up with the advantages I had, she might have accomplished anything. Instead, she suffered acutely and slipped away so invisibly that, thus far, the Kelly [the last place she was known to live] does not know what was done with her body. How many Americans are we losing this way? How can we — the wealthiest nation in human history — tolerate those losses? The fact that we can, and do, despite knowing that it is wrong, is what is meant by the moral cost of homelessness.”
That is a paragraph from page 16 of Jennifer Egan’s seventeen-page exploration of homelessness, “Off the Street,” published in The New Yorker, September 18. 2023. I likely would have read the paragraph as just another representation of The New Yorker style, articulate and insightful with an accent on the personal. Except that I was also in the middle of reading John McWhorter’s Woke Realism. And this passage speaks directly to his criticisms of our current state of cultural affairs.
The lush adjectives — luminous and extraordinary — bestowed upon the downtrodden. The past perfect tense that places a distance between the author, reader, and actual person in question (Iishea…was failed by…). The parallels between author and subject (had Iishea grown up with the advantages I had) that postulate the differences between a renowned author and a homeless person as circumstance. All of which concludes with one person’s tragedy becoming a stand-in for national failure.
Woke Realism is a difficult book to read. I don’t agree with many of Mr. McWhorter’s points. Actually, I choke on many. He writes in a broad, preacher-like voice that makes more proclamations than it fully justifies. I understand his reasoning: John McWhorter is a black author (and linguistics professor at Columbia University who refuses to capitalize the word, black) battling what has become the prescribed world-view of the liberal left. He has to be loud and dogmatic to be heard over the din. It is a point of view, in 2023, that can only be expressed by a respected black intellectual: anyone else would immediately be cancelled.
McWhorter argues that to insist that systemic oppression still exists in this country is folly, considering the tremendous advances and increased opportunities available to all. To be sure, he acknowledges that advantages are not equally distributed, and that blacks more often begin life with fewer. But measuring the relative privilege each of us enters this world with is not the point. The point is, what do you do with the advantages you are bestowed.
Basically, he advocates agency. In McWhorter’s world, being born black presents surmountable hurdles, and lamenting systemic racism is a cop out. Not unlike being diagnosed with ADHD, and appreciating the insight to help you better navigate the world rather than use it as an excuse to do poorly in school. He argues a very-much minority point of view. Then again, it’s always easier to be the victim than the agent, to let things happen to you rather than to attempt to direct events, to complain rather than accept whatever consequences befall.
But McWhorter’s argument goes deeper. He criticizes the so-called equalization that occurs when we see ourselves as cogs in cosmic systems of oppression and privilege. Who benefits when we trumpet solidarity with the oppressed? Does it provide food or shelter or opportunity to those in need? Or does it simply salve the conscience of those who have decided to wear guilt?
I am a huge fan of Jennifer Egan. She is an insightful writer of elegant prose and well-conceived stories. I don’t know what privilege she enjoyed growing up, only that she measures it as more than Iishea Stone’s. Regardless, not everyone with Jennifer Egan’s privilege grows up to write compelling novels and wins a Pulitzer Prize. Her privilege did not deliver that accolade. She earned it. Comparing herself to Iishea Stone does nothing to change her accomplishments. Nor does it elevate Iishea Stone.
Iishea’s Stone’s life and death is a tragedy. The way we treat people living on the streets is a national horror. Jennifer Egan’s well-researched and thorough report about how one Brooklyn facility is trying to counter this tragedy provides useful insight that can help guide better solutions. There is no need for Ms. Egan to place herself in the article. Except that to do so is the language of our times. A language that linguist McWhorter warns us to cleanse.
