Re: Why the Left Needed to Believe in Jason Arday

On Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:50:53 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>Jason Arday was either the most interesting man in the world, or he was 
>a liar. It turned out to be the latter.

Why the right needs to continue whipping this man even though he is
quite demonstrably dead.

>All this has revealed many unflattering things about academia: DEI 
>invites fraud by lowering standards, the bigotry of low expectations is 
>alive and well, and a disturbing number of “experts” — not just Arday 
>but all the Cambridge professors and BBC journalists who co-signed him — 
>are compromised by ideology, cowardice, or both.
>
>But the Arday scandal has also revealed something else: White liberals 
>in the English-speaking world want to believe in the archetype of the 
>up-from-nothing black intellectual who, despite huge disadvantages, goes 
>on to achieve greatness. In fact, they want to believe in this sort of 
>story so badly that they are willing to turn off every ounce of 
>skepticism that they would normally bring to bear on fantastical claims.
>
>The irony, however, is that we already have many examples of 
>up-from-nothing black intellectuals who go on to greatness. It’s just 
>that they usually turn out to be conservatives — or if not 
>conservatives, then at least out-of-step with the left-wing religion of 
>racial justice.
>
>Consider Thomas Sowell. Sowell was born in the Jim Crow South and grew 
>up in a house without hot water or electricity. His father died before 
>he was born, and his mother died soon after. As a teenager, he did a 
>brief stint in a homeless shelter, sleeping with a knife under his 
>pillow. Years later, he somehow managed to make it to Harvard 
>University—before affirmative action existed to cast a doubt over such 
>achievements—and he began what would become one of the great 
>intellectual careers in modern American history.
>
>Or think of Roland Fryer. Fryer was abandoned at birth by his mother. 
>His father, meanwhile, was an abusive, gambling alcoholic who ended up 
>in prison for rape. He also spent quite a bit of time with his 
>great-aunt and cousins, who ran a major crack cocaine operation. Perhaps 
>unsurprisingly, by his teenage years, Fryer was involved in petty crime. 
>Yet he managed to get into college on an athletic scholarship and then 
>caught the economics bug. He would go on to become an award-winning 
>economics professor at Harvard.
>
>Or consider Glenn Loury. Loury grew up in a redlined, working-class 
>neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. During his 
>teens, he fathered two children, and supported them by working in a 
>printing plant—all while taking classes at a community college. 
>Eventually, he worked his way up to MIT, where he earned a PhD. And 
>despite his later crack cocaine addiction, Loury went on to an 
>illustrious career as an economist and political commentator.
>
>In an alternate reality, Sowell, Fryer, and Loury would be heroes of the 
>left, just like Jason Arday was until his downfall. After all, it is the 
>left and not the right that frequently talks about “centering black 
>voices.” But there’s one problem. Though progressives would never say 
>this out loud, people like Sowell, Fryer, and Loury don’t serve the 
>purpose for which black intellectuals are intended, which is not to 
>advance research or fight for the interests of black people but rather 
>to scratch a very specific psychological itch in the white liberal psyche.
>
>In the progressive mind, white people are forever the problem and need 
>to be told that purging the racism within their hearts is the key to 
>black advancement. Black intellectuals who ritualistically affirm this 
>belief — people like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, and Nikole 
>Hannah-Jones — are useful. They are serving their intended purpose. 
>Black intellectuals who don’t do this are not just useless; they are an 
>active threat to the white guilt complex.
>
>Sowell, for example, has spent his career arguing, quite persuasively, 
>that discrimination is not the only possible cause of racial disparities 
>and that culture matters a great deal, too. Fryer has argued, again 
>persuasively, that American police departments are no likelier to use 
>deadly force on black suspects than on suspects who aren’t black; that 
>Justice Department pattern-or-practice investigations into police 
>agencies (often favored by Democratic administrations) cause an increase 
>in violent crime, which hurts the black community most; and that the 
>“acting white” penalty imposed by the black community on its own members 
>is a real thing. Loury, for his part, has a long-running podcast with 
>John McWhorter (a self-described “cranky liberal Democrat”) that has 
>featured some of the best criticisms of woke racial politics out there.
>
>So with all of the genuinely inspiring black intellectuals rendered 
>useless by their stubborn independence of mind, who is left to scratch 
>this guilty itch in the liberal psyche? Well, it would seem that the 
>second string has had to suffice. And that’s where the Jason Ardays of 
>the world come in. It should go without saying that Arday’s death is a 
>terrible tragedy that no one should celebrate. At the same time, it is 
>true to say that this tragedy was enabled by the psychological need 
>among liberal elites for a black avatar of their guilt.
>
>Arday’s death should be a call for liberals and progressives to look 
>inward — not to expunge the supposed demon of white supremacy, but to 
>look at the nature of white guilt itself. Ultimately, white guilt is a 
>virus that leads its victims to prioritize their own need for catharsis 
>over the public’s need for truth. The moment that elites in the West 
>have this much-needed epiphany en masse will be the moment that we 
>ensure the tragic case of Jason Arday never repeats itself.
>
>Coleman Hughes
-- 
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