McWhorter interview

[Paul Frank]

Thanks for this, Wilson. I can't stand John McWhorter for all sorts of
reasons, starting with his association with the Manhattan Institute,
which endorses the views of the likes of  Charles Krauthammer,*
Charles Murray, and Clarence Thomas. And to equate the language(s) of
black speakers in the USA with the argot of drug dealers is obscene.
But as an uninformed layman interested in language, I thought a couple
of the things McWhorter said were interesting, though I'm not
qualified to judge whether he's right. This for instance: "She be
walking. Nobody would say that looking at somebody ambling by. That
means that somebody walks on a habitual basis. So you would talk about
somebody be walking everyday at 7 o'clock." And that Black English, or
any English spoken in America, is much closer to British English
dialects past and present than to West African languages is so
obvious, or ought to be, that it's not even worth mentioning.

Why did I have to mention the name Krauthammer? The name has an emetic
effect on me. I recall a memorable phrase Krauthammer used one night
in March of 2003: immaculate destruction. I jotted it down at the time
(I was living in a mountain village in Haute-Savoie, France): "It's
4:30 a.m. Last night I watched television for a few minutes: bombs
were raining on Baghdad, a city populated by people. I went to bed
early and was tossing and turning until a few minutes ago, when I went
downstairs and turned on the TV set again. CNN announced that 1,500
bombs and missiles had been fired at Baghdad and Iraq during this, the
first night of the 'shock and awe' campaign. The TV screen showed
colorful images of bombs exploding. I remembered something I heard on
Fox News before going to bed: a man wearing a nice suit and tie said
that it was a good thing that the lights were on in Baghdad, 'because
we want to see this.' And it was quite a show. A few minutes ago I
turned on Fox News and heard Charles Krauthammer boast: 'We have a
campaign of immaculate destruction.' 'We have the technology and the
will to do it.' " I always think of this when I hear the name
Krauthammer. But I digress...

Paul


Paul Frank
Translator
German, French, Italian > English
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
paul.frank at bfs.admin.ch



On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â 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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