Redstone's focus on the misuse and abuse of "racism" and "white supremacy" is not only correct, it is crucially important. As a sociologist myself (though sometimes I consider myself a lapsed sociologist), I have considered writing almost exactly such a commentary several times.

To Redstone's spot-on points I would add that in my view, these redefinitions are the essence of an anti-intellectual sophistry among good people who consider themselves sophisticated and intellectual.

What we have here may be the inverse of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan was arguing in his famous (or infamous) commentary "Defining Deviancy Down" (about 1993). As many Persuasion folks likely know, at times a sociology professor and a U.S. Senator, Moynihan was a heterodox and unwoke liberal long before his time. His point, simply put, was that it was possible to redefine deviant behavior in such as way that practically nothing would be seen as deviant, or, as our conservative friends used to like to say (before Trump) we'd get a moral relativism in which just about "anything goes." Moynihan's view was not that we were there, but that perhaps we were heading too far in that direction. (More specifically, Moynihan's concerns, going back to the 1960's and 70's, were largely about family issues, and particularly the long term decline in marriage rates and increasing rates of single-motherhood among Black Americans. For this he was called names, even back then.)

In this light, Redstone's article might be titled "Defining Racism and White Supremacy Up." Instead of fewer and fewer objectively problematic behaviors being recognized as problematic, we are confronted with a situation where -- as Redstone and others have well documented -- more and more previously mundane behaviors and attitudes have been redefined as "racist" and "white supremacist," -- and in fact, "racist" and "white supremacist" have become interchangeable synonyms among many in the woke community.

Redstone of course aptly points out that this means that intellectual concepts, "racist" and "white supremacist" lose their meaning, and as terms of insult (name-calling) lose their potency. I want to add that this also shines a light on the anti-intellectualism of those engaged in the redefining. After all, what is intellectualism if we lose perspicacity and discernment? In the old days, sociologists used to be criticized (and mocked) for creating to many new words for old things -- and there certainly was some merit to the criticism. But the goal was to develop more precise concepts and terms for important distinctions among such "old things," as well as to see genuine similarity across otherwise different things.

Thus, many have asked why the woke set, and many "critical theorist" anti-intellectuals, keep using "racism" and "white supremacy" when there are all kinds of better, more precise, more meaningful, and more perspicacious ideas already out there -- "unconscious bias" being one that Dr. Redstone indicates. To consciously fail to distinguish in your name-calling between David Duke and his ilk, on the one hand, versus well-meaning non-hating people who-hate-David Duke-but-who-disagree-with -you, is lacking in discernment and anti-intellectual. Similarly, to fail to recognize that David Duke and Louis Farrakhan are both extraordinarily odious racists, while accusing those well-meaning non-hating people of racism, is intellectually dishonest. (I say "dishonest" because, I honestly believe that almost all of these folks know better.)

So why would intelligent (and presumably well-meaning) people be so intellectually dishonest and anti-intellectual? I suggest in part because they are "activist-scholars" (and it appear difficult for new academics in the liberal arts to define themselves in any other way, these days). That is, many of these intelligent people are not intellectuals in the old (presumably racist, sexist, etc.) sense of humble individuals setting out to understand what is going on in the world. Rather, they are proud activist-scholars, who already know everything, and are ready to impose what they know on everyone else. In this context of anti-intellectual, unscientific certitude, skepticism becomes heterodox, a subversion of the revolution, and you get called names, be that by the nation's president on twitter, or by some effete representative for all of the oppressed, in a New York Times op-ed.

Stuff like that. Anyhow, thanks, Dr. Redstone, for writing this, and to Persuasion for the forum.