McWhorter interview

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Ebonics

What's up with this continuing conflation of drug-dealer jargon/code
with Ebonics/Black English (Vernacular)/African-American (Vernacular)
English, or whatever TF the ridiculously-laughable hip term is, these
days? Just from the samples that I've seen quoted here, I have to ask,
How the fuck is a nigger going to be able to translate that shit,
merely on the basis of his being a nigger? *I* certainly don't know.
If being a black speaker is all that's necessary for this job, why
isn't McWhorter himself jumping at it? It can't be that his salary is
sufficient unto his needs. As William Cosby, EdD, once asked, "How
much money is *enough* money?"

How is McWhorter not able to see the racist assumption behind this
search for Ebonics-speakers: that any nigger is hip to the drug trade?
There's no decrypting that coded language without one's being a part
of that life! What makes the DEA think that all it needs to do is to
hire somebody out of the 'hood and then everything is going be
everything? And why is that black fool, McWhorter, giving this typical
example of everyday white mischief - "If one does it, they all do it"
- his imprimatur?

A chump with a PhD is still a chump. The phrase, "disgrace to the
race," has not outlived its usefulness. Prof. McWhorter is the worst
kind, because he isn't some ordinary black man off the street. He's an
expert, a professional man, a PhD, not some junior-flip pimp. And he
teaches at a *white* school, besides!

If he's so down with the DEA, then anything that it does *must* be
completely unbiased. A colored fellow with a doctorate have done
*said* so! Own In-Pee-Ahra!

If Paul, who has no dog in this fight, sees the situation so clearly
that he has very wisely underlined the fact any resemblance of this
stupidity to any opinion of his own, public or private, is
non-existant, how can it be that "Doctor Tom" McWhorter is stupid
enough to endorse it?

Lord have mercy!
--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org