Bygone racism makes black intellectuals better than white intellectuals

Something I've been thinking about: Compare the presentation styles of prominent American intellectuals by race.

Black public intellectuals—Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams—consistently maintain serious, scholarly presentation. No forced humor, no accessibility theater. Just rigorous engagement with ideas. White American intellectuals often default to comedic, "relatable" presentation that feels incongruent with serious subject matter. The constant need to be perceived as "fun" actually undermines their authority.

Black intellectuals believe they face skeptical audiences requiring proof of intellectual legitimacy—no room for entertainment performance. White intellectual elites underestimate the intelligence of the general population and overestimate their intellectual separation from the masses. White intellectuals are way more inclined to be hyper focused on relatably and creating a folksy public persona.

The European intellectual tradition of maintaining a gravitas in public discourse, assuming an audience can stick with difficult topics for extended durations, is ironically only being continued by intellectuals of non-european lineage in America.

I think credibility pressure actually improves intellectual output.