Bourgeois Norms in Black History, Robert Woodson’s Take
27th November 2017
I wrote here about an op-ed by professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in which the authors praised America’s 1950s “bourgeois culture.” Though acknowledging the existence of “racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism” in that culture, they insisted that the modern “loss of bourgeois habits has seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups.”
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Predictably, Wax and Alexander were instantly accused of racism by what Robert Woodson describes as “the growing army of angry academics who police the prevailing narrative of black victimhood.” Woodson observes that, according to this narrative “black progress is determined not by personal choices and individual behavior, but by white supremacy, America’s history of slavery and discrimination, and institutional racism.” Thus, “touting ‘bourgeois values’ is interpreted as an offense against authentic black culture.”