McWhorter interview

[Jonathan Lighter]

I suspect that NPR gave McWhorter a call and asked if he'd mind being
interviewed about "Ebonics."  As a reputable scholar, he may have thought
they really meant "Ebonics."

JL

Because that's what he talks about, unless I skipped over something.

On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: McWhorter interview
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
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