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☆ Opinion | Is ‘Yo’ the Gender-Neutral Pronoun You’ve Been Looking For?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

My focus this time out is on standard English rather than nonstandard English, since one of my recent books was about Black English. Although they are often presumed to be simpler — in a word, dumber — than standard English, the opposite is often true. One example I am thinking of is a relatively new and unheralded gender-neutral pronoun that has emerged in, of all places, Baltimore. Gender-neutral pronouns are a thorny topic in English. But in English, a truly accepted gender-neutral pronoun has been a holy grail for generations.

Persons: A.A . Milne, ”, “ Ariella Locations: Baltimore

☆ Opinion | What Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Meant When She Said ‘Blink’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

To a linguist, there is so much to appreciate in just about every word. And over the past couple of weeks, I have been delighting in none other than the word “blink.”This delight was inspired by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. In fact, in different ways, the word “blink” points us both backward and forward in time. Justice Jackson’s usage of the term was apparently the result of the expression “blinks reality,” which is relatively common in legal writings. “Blink” had come to mean “neglect” by the 18th century, and the usage was ordinary up through the Gilded Age.

Persons: Ketanji Brown Jackson, ”, George Eliot’s “ Adam Bede ”, Henry James’s, Blink ”, “ Organizations: Supreme

☆ Opinion | On Race and Academia
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But I have always thought of that as racial preferences the way they should have been, merely additive around the margins. I was hired straight out of my doctoral program for a tenure-track job at an Ivy League university in its august linguistics department. Plus, I was brought on to represent a subfield within linguistics — sociolinguistics — that has never been my actual specialty. At the time I was not very politicized, and I assumed that my race had merely been a background bonus to help me get hired. I had been hired by white people who, quite innocently, thought they were doing the right thing by bringing a Black person onto the faculty.

Organizations: Ivy League university

☆ Opinion | Reparations Should Be an End, Not a Beginning
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-22 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For a long while, reparations for Black Americans has been more a debate topic than a reality. I know that various groups of Americans have been granted reparations in the past, such as the descendants of Japanese Americans placed in internment camps during World War II. And I certainly believe that Black Americans have deserved reparations. It’s more that I have questioned the idea of what I would regard as new reparations. Affirmative action can be seen as an enormous reparations policy, although the term is rarely used in that context.

Persons: I’ve, William Darity Jr, Kirsten Mullen’s “, ”, Boris Bittker Organizations: Black, New, New York State, National Welfare Rights Organization, Reinvestment Locations: Evanston, Ill, San Francisco, New York

☆ Opinion | Forget Nouns. Verbs Are Where the Action Is.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The verb “see” is “doe,” uttered with a high pitch. To put the verb into past tense, you say it with a low pitch. To say that rather than mere glimpsing, you looked at something deliberately, you start on that low pitch and go even lower. And if you want to say the opposite, that you just looked something over quickly, you start high and then swoop low. Wait, wait!” This was perfectly ordinary speech, and it entailed four verbs and zero nouns or adjectives.

Persons: ”, Walt Whitman’s, Puedo, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, “, Daffy Organizations: Iau, Berlitz Locations: Fennoscandia, Thailand, Papua Province, Spanish

☆ Opinion | Is Musicology Racist?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Regarding the piano, for example, Ewell thinks it “enforces a commitment to whiteness and maleness,” and thus playing it should not be expected of those who teach music theory. Ewell also believes musicology should entail no foreign language requirements, because Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German are “white” languages. If we are to be maximally un-white about the matter, I am hoping he is referring to music theory work in Swahili, Hausa, Amharic or Twi, but it’d be good to have some specifics. Music theory has traditionally been taught with a major focus on the work of the Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker, whom Ewell specifically attacked in his 2019 article. The issue was widely condemned as racist in musicology circles, and Jackson was barred from the journal amid calls for his firing as a professor at the university that supports it.

☆ What Jordan Neely’s Death Tells Us About the Subway - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

And not only one’s children: I fear that the current situation on the subways may foster racial bigotry more broadly. I’ve heard this past week that we should tolerate the reality that these men make us “uncomfortable” on the subway. New Yorkers these days have read stories of people being pushed onto the tracks or stabbed by troubled individuals in subway stations. I am going to venture an idea that may be unpopular: Jordan Neely, in all of his innocence, did deserve restraint. The system needs to help both the Jordan Neelys and the rest of us.

☆ Opinion | The Evidence Is In: Science Should Be Judged on the Merits
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Pamela Paul | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Consider the increasingly widespread practice of appending a “positionality statement” to one’s research. This is an explicit acknowledgment by the author of an academic paper of his or her identity (e.g., “nondisabled,” “continuing generation”). Positionality statements were first popular in the social sciences and are now spreading to the hard sciences and medicine. The purpose of a citation in an academic publication is to substantiate claims and offer the most relevant supporting research. Many prominent science journals now recommend that before submission, authors run their papers through software programs that detect any citation bias.

☆ Opinion | Guns, Not Race, Are at the Root of the Wave of ‘Trespass’ Shootings
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( John Mcwhorter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On April 13, Ralph Yarl, 16 years old and Black, rang Andrew Lester’s doorbell in Kansas City, Mo., by mistake, Yarl’s family said. According to prosecutors, Lester, 84 and white, shot Yarl at the door twice. Enlightened American wisdom suggests that race must have had something to do with this. In Hebron, N.Y., a group of young adults driving three vehicles late at night were seeking a friend’s house. But when they mistakenly drove into Kevin Monahan’s driveway, he fired shots into one car, killing a passenger, Kaylin Gillis.

By Quoctrung Bui, Sara Chodosh, Jessica Bennett and John McWhorterQuoctrung Bui and Sara Chodosh are graphics editors for Opinion. Jessica Bennett is a contributing editor for Opinion who writes on gender and culture. John McWhorter is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University who writes on race and language. There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone. Take our quiz and see how your language use compares, then scroll down for the full results and discussion.

☆ Affirmative Action Round Table: Is Diversity in the Modern Era on Trial? - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Lulu Garcia-Navarro | Round Table | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I believe that there are ways of getting at brown students other than lowering qualifications. And I think, frankly, the culture of higher education is such that we don’t have to worry whether that’ll happen. And I don’t think that we’re necessarily going to see what we would have any reason to call an emergency in race relations and opportunity. If that’s what we were going to see, I would not be for it. And I think that we can afford to actually try to have that happen at this point.

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