Prof. John McWhorter: The Ten Tenets of Third Wave Antiracism

Walt is grateful to the good folks at Blazing Cat Fur for giving us the link to John McWhorter's new book The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and their Threat to a Progressive America. Dr McWhorter teaches linguistics, American Studies, and music history at Columbia University. He is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and host of Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast.

Professor McWhorter is the author of twenty books, including The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language; Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America; and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. He also wrote Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority (PenguinRandomHouse 2003), which I mention here to exemplify the author's mindset. His views on politics and the alleged "systemic racism" of American society are, I expect, not unlike those expressesd by Thomas Sowell.

The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists and their Threat to a Progressive America is being published as an e-book, in instalments you can read by clicking on the link at the beginning of this sentence. In this book, Dr McWhorter argues that a new religion -- Third Wave Antiracism -- is being preached across America. Third Wave Antiracism, he writes, is nonsense posing as wisdom.

Space doesn't allow us to repost the first of the serial excerpts in its entirety, but we do want to share Dr McWhorter's list of the Ten Tenets of Third Wave Antiracism, which "stated clearly and placed in simple oppositions, translate into nothing whatsoever." 

 1. When black people say you have insulted them, apologize with profound sincerity and guilt. But don’t put black people in a position where you expect them to forgive you. They have dealt with too much to be expected to. 

 2. Black people are a conglomeration of disparate individuals. “Black culture” is code for “pathological, primitive ghetto people.” But don’t expect black people to assimilate to “white” social norms because black people have a culture of their own. 

 3. Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own. 

 4. You must strive eternally to understand the experiences of black people. But you can never understand what it is to be black, and if you think you do you’re a racist. 

 5. Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate. What is not your culture is not for you, and you may not try it or do it. But—if you aren’t nevertheless interested in it, you are a racist. 

 6. Support black people in creating their own spaces and stay out of them. But seek to have black friends. If you don’t have any, you’re a racist. And if you claim any, they’d better be good friends—in their private spaces, you aren’t allowed in. 

 7. When whites move away from black neighborhoods, it’s white flight. But when whites move into black neighborhoods, it’s gentrification, even when they pay black residents generously for their houses. 

 8. If you’re white and only date white people, you’re a racist. But if you’re white and date a black person you are, if only deep down, exotifying an “other.”

 9. Black people cannot be held accountable for everything every black person does. But all whites must acknowledge their personal complicity in the perfidy throughout history of “whiteness.” 

 10. Black students must be admitted to schools via adjusted grade and test score standards to ensure a representative number of them and foster a diversity of views in classrooms. But it is racist to assume a black student was admitted to a school via racial preferences, and racist to expect them to represent the “diverse” view in classroom discussions.

I suspect (Dr McWhorter writes) that deep down, most know that none of this catechism makes any sense. Less obvious is that it was not even composed with logic in mind. The self-contradiction of these tenets is crucial, in revealing that Third Wave Antiracism is not a philosophy but a religion. 

The Fort Mudge Library is run by certified (certifiable?) liberals, and has nothing by Dr McWhorter in its catalogue, but I will continue my search (especially for the book on the English Language), and suggest that readers do likewise.

Further reading/viewing: "Professor Thomas Sowell talks about black culture", WWW 20/1/21.

Bad English - Who cares?

In reviewing Michael Savage's Stop the Coming Civil War, Walt complained that the book is poorly written. I called it "not so much a piece of writing as a collage of transcriptions of Mr. Savage's radio rants." That doesn't mean it's hard to read. Quite the opposite. It's written and edited (?) to a level which is comfortable for a reader of the New York Post or National Enquirer. You know. The ones whose lips move as they read.

If I were to calculate Stop the Coming Civil War 's Fog Index, I'd bet that the book would prove to have been edited to a reading ease level of Grade 7. That, sadly, is about right for your average American or Canadian. (It's hard to tell about the Brits. The gap between the educated and uneducated in the UK is much wider than that of English-speaking North America.)

Thoughtful people like Dr. Rudolf Flesch have been bemoaning the decline of educational standards in general, and reading in particular, for decades. Dr. Flesch's seminal work Why Johnny Can't Read appeared in 1955. He argued for a return to the phonetic (as opposed to ideographic) method of learning to read. But instead of teaching people to read better, our "educators" are now teaching people to write worse!

This thesis is put forward -- with qualified approval -- by Dr. John H. McWhorter, of UC Berkeley (where else?) in Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (Gotham Books, 2003) -- winner of the Walt Whiteman Prize for Longest Book Title of that year.

Dr. John (as I'm sure he'd like to be known) is a musician cum linguist, or linguist cum musician, take your pick. He makes a good case that, in the hippy-dippy 60s, American English changed from being a written language to an oral language, written down the way it's spoken.

An extreme example -- Walt's, not Dr. John's -- would be the comparison of Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1960 with Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail `72. Just the style used to denote the year in the two titles makes the point. Since 1965 -- Dr. McWhorter is very precise about the year -- authors have started to write the way Americans talk... for better or worse.

Dr. McWhorter pinpoints 1965, the year following the passing of the Civil Rights Act. That landmark legislation made it suddenly not just OK, but cool to be black. "African-Americans" (a term which would only come years later) no longer had to "act white" or "talk white" to be successful, particularly in the field of popular music. Nat King Cole was out; Aretha Franklin was in. "Black English" or "ebonics" (as progressives like Dr. John would have it) became not just acceptable but emulated by the white majority.

The result? People stopped trying to write stylish, grammatical English and started writing as they talk. This is particularly so with popular music. Try writing down the lyrics of hit songs of the last two decades, and comparing them with the words turned out by even the poorer Tin Pan Alley hacks of yesteryear.

Dr. McWhorter flirts with the notion (if not the word) of the degradation of American English. Walt would say "blackification", but of course that's not politically correct. The fact remains that even educated people, like the Prez, have adopted a less grammatical, more folksy style of speech -- "We's all jes folks heah in Nawlins!" -- and that style is reflected in much American writing, including that of Michael Savage, Ph.D.

Dr. McWhorter does not condemn the degradation of American English. He merely identifies the trend and predicts that it will continue. He's all, like, wassup wit dat? He's OK with it, y'know? Walt is not. Walt doesn't speak (or write) WalMart.

Footnote: Like Michael Savage (Ph.D.), John McWhorter (Ph.D.) could do with the services of an editor and fact-checker. "Dr. Suess" should be "Dr. Seuss", but then, "Suess" sounds more like the way the name is pronounced. Dr. McWhorter doesn't write very well either, but he would probably say that just proves his point.

Further reading: "Book Review: John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing", Wordorigins, June 2004.

Was Rachel Jeantel speaking "Black English" or "Ebonics" or what?

The first thing we must do is identify Rachel Jeantel for those who weren't following the Trayvon Martin controversy closely. Rachel is a BBW from the `hood, and was on the phone with Trayvon Martin at the time of the confrontation with George Zimmerman at the end of which Trayvon was dead. She was thus the prosecution's star witness at Mr. Zimmerman's trial.

If you search "Rachel Jeantel" on YouTube, you can find Ms. Jeantel's testimony in its entirety. But will you be able to understand what she's saying? Counsel for the defence made much of the fact that he was having difficulty doing so. His many requests for repetition or clarification of what she said were seen by some as an attempt to denigrate [No puns, please. Ed.] her intelligence/education/integrity.

In other words, the defence was accused of racism, of trying to discredit Ms. Jeantel and her testimony based on who she was and how she spoke. Among those hollering "racism" was John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics and editor of the ultra-liberal New Republic. Interviewed on "All In" by the very PC Chris Hayes, Prof. McWhorter asserted that Ms Jeantel was merely speaking "Black English", and very articulately too. If her answers weren't clear to the judge and the jury, it was because they were "crackers", the whole lot of them.

But is there such a thing as "Black English"? If so, is it a generally acceptable part of "the linguistic bounty that is America" (to quote Hayes)? Prof. McWhorter declined to debate the issue on Fox News, but Jehmu Green and Brian Benjamin, both persons of colour, had at it. Here's what they had to say.



Mr. Benjamin said there's no such thing as "Black English". Ms. Green adopted Jesse Jackson's characterization of the "language" as a "garbage dialect". Whatever "Black English" may be, she said, "it's not a language that's going to get you to graduate from high school, to go to college, to find a job, or to keep a job."

As you watch the video, you can't help but be impressed by both debaters' command of proper English. (I was tempted to write "the Queen's English", but hey, it's America.) They don't speak "Black English", at least not on TV.

Nor is "Black English" the mangled language misused by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll in the old (and very politically incorrect) radio and TV sitcom, Amos 'n' Andy. Messrs. Gosden and Correll were white actors who wrote and spoke in the artificial "dialect" of the minstrel show tradition -- a caricature of the way American blacks really spoke, even back in the day.

Back in the 60s, "linguistics experts" like Prof. McWhorter coined another label for the "language" they now call "Black English". They called it "Ebonics", and defined it as African-American Vernacular English, "a distinctive lect of English spoken by many African-Americans". There's a book about it -- Ebonics, the True Language of Black Folks -- but that doesn't make it a language.

What is "Ebonics" then? The Urban Dictionary calls it "a poor excuse for a failure to grasp the basics of english [sic]. When in doubt, throw an "izzle" sound in the middle of any word of just string random thoughts together and insinuate that they actually mean something. When backed into a corner, you can always claim that it has something to do with a sort of symbolism or is a defining trait that makes your race great, versus own up to the fact that it is essentially laziness at it's [sic]finest.

Ms. Jeantel wasn't speaking "Ebonics", nor was she speaking "Black English". What Ms. Jeantel speaks is the idiom of the `hood, the language spoken by poor blacks -- and white and Latinos -- who grow up in certain parts of American cities. It is not the language used by the likes of Ms. Green and Mr. Benjamin, or Prof. McWhorter. It is that of folks who are poor and uneducated and happy to remain the latter if not the former. It doesn't mean they're bad folks or dumb folks, only that they are what they are -- members of a distinct and growing American underclass.

What's "ebonics"? What's an "end-man"?

Following up my first post of the morning, to save you checking with Wikipedia, here's what you need to know.

Ebonics (from the words "ebony" -- like the magazine -- and "phonics" -- like "old learning") is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from African slaves. Since 1996, Ebonics has primarily been used to refer to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect distinctively different from Standard American English.

AAVE is the politically correct term for what used to be called NNE, "Nonstandard Negro English". "Ebonics" was coined in 1973 by social psychologist Robert Williams, formerly a Negro but now an African-American. His intention was to give a name to the language of African-Americans that acknowledged the linguistic consequence of the slave trade and avoided the negative connotations of other terms.

With all respect to John McWhorter -- see previous post -- ebonics or AAVE or NNE or whatever you call it is non-standard English. God help the USA if public officials must talk "jive talk" to make themselves understood to the citizenry.

Speaking of jive talk... an end-man was a character in a black-and-white minstrel show, popular in the USA, Canada, and even in the UK in the 19th and 20th centuries. Blackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American theatrical form. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry, and for several decades it provided the lens through which white America saw black America. The Wikipedia article says: "On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and broad awareness of significant aspects of black-American culture."


The end-men, in the picture, are the two performers sitting at the ends of the group. Traditionally they were Mr. Tambo (who played the tambourine) and Mr. Bones (you figure it out). They, and all the characters except Mr. Interlocutor (who was white) talked like Amos 'n' Andy.

I guess what they were speaking was "ebonics". If President Al aspires to reach that level, he needs more practice. If he'd been around 50 years ago, he could have joined a minstrel show. Sadly, minstrelsy, like Amos 'n' Andy, was killed in the 1960s, another victim of political correctness.

Does the Prez really talk like a [you know what]?

You probably didn't see Al O'Bama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on Saturday. Walt couldn't make it. But you likely saw a clip on TV or read the transcript.

Associated Press quoted the Prez of the Former Most Powerful Nation on Earth as telling African-Americans to "Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. [My emphasis. Walt] We are going to press on. We have work to do."

Woah! Did the Man really drop his G's like that? Maybe not. Other outlets cleaned up the transcript, making the relevant sentences read "Stop complaining. Stop grumbling. Stop crying." That's the way a college graduate would say it, right? Not to mention a senator or a president.

So why did AP use what a linguistics expert called an "interpretive translation"? On Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, African-American author Karen Hunter called AP's version "racist". [Gee. That didn't even take 24 hours. Ed.] Walt assumes she meant that the politically correct thing to do would be to clean up Al's speech -- specifically including the dropped g's -- so he wouldn't sound like an end-man.

But noted linguistics expert John McWhorter argued the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that dialect." [Emphasis still mine. Walt]

McWhorter argued that "Black English" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- is becoming the lingua franca of American youth, and that "America, including non-black America, loves that way of speaking."

Rumour has it that all candidates for the Democractic nomination will henceforward be required to demonstrate their proficiency in the USA's other language -- ebonics. Walt thinks the last contender who spoke really well was William F. Buckley, Jr.