In McWhorter's earlier book Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (New York: Gotham Books, 2003), he says, "[a]s Walter Ong observes in his splendid Orality and Literacy (a truly consciousness-altering book I highly recommend), there was nothing special about this scansion [of a certain passage in the Hebrew Bible] to ordinary people alive when it was written" (page 20; also see pages 38 and 39).
In McWhorter's 2021 book Woke Racism, his theme that Third Wave Antiracism is not just a certain ideology but a religion allows him to express his own jaundiced views of the three Abrahamic religions. For example, McWhorter says, "Of course, the 'race thing' Catechism of Contradictions makes no sense, but then neither does the bible" (page 12).
In any event, McWhorter says, "Religion knows no culture. Nor do all religions entail worship of a God (the Elect [in Third Wave Antiracism] lack one), or even forgiveness (which the Elect do not seem to have exactly caught up with just yet). As Eric Hoffer put it [in his 1951 book The True Believer], religions don't need a God, but they do need a devil, and the Elect have that down quite comfortably" (page 60).
For a more capacious account of religion, see Robert N. Bellah's 2011 book Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).
But also see my 4,500-word 2021 online review essay "Robert N. Bellah's 2011 Book Religion in Human Evolution, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" that is available through the University of Minnesota's digital conservancy:
https://hdl.handle.net/11299/225352
Now, when it comes time for McWhorter himself to spell out his own political recommendations for advancing the lives of black Americans today, he recommends the following three planks:
(1) "Plank 1: End the War on Drugs" (pages 140-141);
(2) "Plank 2: Teaching Reading Properly" (pages 141-143);
(3) "Plank 3: Get Past the Idea That Everybody Must go to College" (pages 143-144).
Concerning McWhorter's Plank 2, see my OEN article "An Open Letter to the Honorable Jerry Brown, Governor of California" (dated September 20, 2015):
In conclusion, it strikes me as safe to say that McWhorter's new 2021 book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America will make him persona non grata among the proponents of what he refers to as Third Wave Antiracism.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
