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UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers talks to eminent economist and social scientist Professor Glenn Loury about a troubling new shift in American discourse: the rise of Right-wing identity politics. Traditionally a critic of the woke Left, Loury turns his sights on the world’s wealthiest man, arguing that Elon Musk is making a “category mistake” by importing South African racial anxieties into the American context. By embracing white solidarity and racial essentialism, Loury argues, the Right is not defeating identity politics, but is instead adopting a politically destructive mirror image of the very ideology they claim to oppose.
Elon Musk was not yet born when I lived and worked in Johannesburg. In those days apartheid was discussed constantly. Mandela was referred to as ‘the future first black president of SA’. All races danced together at Jaluka concerts. It was cool (yet illegal) to go to a shebeen in Soweto. The Black Sash of posh white women arranged illegal trips to black townships for whites to see for themselves. Later on whites voted for FW de Clerk who was awarded the Nobel prize jointly with Mandela. Historical truth cannot be altered.
Musk and others like him are the diaspora fleeing SA. They had nothing to do with apartheid beyond bringing about its demise.
Imagine all the people…
P.S. Many residents of the USSR held a different opinion. I remember a friend telling me, “There was a beautiful city Saigon on the map.” I’d like to point out that we weren’t dissidents. We simply had a well-developed sixth sense.
You lost me (dumb soutpiel that I am)
But have an uptick for deep thought
I have no idea what you are saying.
Its an Afrikaans word
The only reason why Loury is linking Musk with Apartheid, accusing him of importing South African racial anxieties into the American context, is because Musk was born a white in South Africa. What a cheap shot!
Apartheid is the gift that keeps on giving to the Left Wing. To evoke the Apartheid spectre is to signal one’s ‘Progressive’ virtue. No matter that the people who took over the governance of South Africa from the White Afrikaners are far worse than their predecessors, who have enacted far more racial (anti-White) laws than the anti-Black laws enacted under the Apartheid régime, who have brought the strongest economy in Africa to its knees (not surprise there), who have outshone their Black liberation heroes in those nations North of the Limpopo in corruption, incompetence, curtailment of civil liberties, cynically espousing international human rights whilst committing grievous human rights abuses at home, who have enriched themselves to rub shoulders with the wealthiest at Davos while their subjects live in poverty, starve and walk in rags; and who have precipitated the largest White Flight from Africa in its history. Africa – the continent where democracy is alien to its value systems and politics. Why did Loury not concentrate on those far more pressing issues? Don’t answer! It’s obvious why not. The adjective begins with an ‘R’ and ends in ‘M’.
I despise people like Loury who use the Apartheid card to beat out the well-worn anti-White message. How about an article castigating the disgusting human rights abuses (including Black-on-Black slavery), utter incompetence in governance and crippling corruption in Africa since Ghana ‘achieved’ its independence in 1957. It is an horrific story that is hardly referred to while the Apartheid bandwagon rolls steadily on, its tom-toms spreading the message about the Oppressed Blacks’ noble struggle against their reviled White Oppressors.
Woza Friday … we are the scatterlings of Africa.
sorry Glen, you have more ill-placed faith in the institutions in the West for civilly resolving social problems, I guess you had not been reading news about what’s happening in the UK and Europe. If I were white, I would be very worried. the left has unleashed identitarian politics, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle.
glen’s opinions seem to be very high- minded, and it seems it’s argument for argument’s sake, rather than a heartfelt assessment of the very grim situation facing us.