Thank you for this John, sincerely. It is a relief to know that I am not crazy in thinking that the anti-racism that I grew up with (I am 47 years old) has been turned on its head and perverted in disturbing ways. I have far too many thoughts on this topic to commit them all to a single comment section. Suffice it to say that you have been an oasis of reasonableness for me in many of your Atlantic pieces, and I can't wait to read your book. As you mention, it is crucial that there are black voices speaking these truths; white people like myself have limited credibility in this regard, no matter how resistant we may be to the opprobrium of progressive shaming. You taking this stand means so much.

The one area where I will diverge a bit, as others here have noted, is in the value of intellectually engaging "The Elect". I think the concept of "permission structures" really applies here: sometimes it just takes someone willing to puncture the bubble of inviolability around a sacred "truth" in order for people to allow themselves to begin scrutinizing it with fairness and sincerity. I say this as someone who was raised Catholic yet abandoned religion shortly after I allowed myself to begin questioning it. In other words, I did, in fact, reason my way out of something I never reasoned myself into.

A good contemporary social issue to illustrate this point would be the demonization of "blackface". To me, this is one of the most impenetrable issues in modern progressive ideology, so much so that Megan Kelly (no doubt being retroactively sanctioned for past transgressions) was chased from respectable society for merely asking (awkwardly) a reasonable question about Halloween costumes - one which you admirably took on in the Atlantic after the Virginia politician blackface scandal. I have a strong suspicion many people reading your article would find themselves suddenly feeling a subconscious knot untying and wondering why your very sensible and straightforward ideas on this matter had never occurred to them before (or perhaps feeling silent relief that they no longer had to suppress their misgivings). This suspicion was confirmed when Jamie Foxx's Twitter defense of Jimmy Fallon's 20-year-old (yet suddenly extremely concerning) Chris Rock impersonation appeared to give way to more people online openly expressing the seemingly obvious sentiment that Fallon was not, in fact, guilty of a long-buried hate crime. Sure, it didn't stop some smug progressive pundits from feeling falsely vindicated by Fallon's cringe-worthy self-abasement episode, but it gave an opening for the beginnings of some sensibility on the matter.

In short, I have high hopes that your book will be the catalyst that opens the conversation on the entire range of essentialist, illiberal thought plaguing modern American racial discourse. I'd be surprised if I don't end up recommending it regularly.