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John McWhorter Quotes

born 1965 United States

John Hamilton McWhorter V (born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist, author, and educator, currently an associate professor at Columbia University.

United States
Linguists
Non-fiction authors
Social scientists

Random John McWhorter quote

5 quotes

If your opinions never evolve, you’re either not paying attention or not genuinely interested.

[T]here comes a point when a usage is so common that we must consider it not slovenliness but change.

We clap when our infants don't spill their food. We can afford to let go of clapping when exotic folks don't, when in our times, celebrating diversity is a shibboleth of moral legitimacy among thinking First World people, and considerably, if not comprehensibly, beyond.

There is a certain mercy in the impression that he won’t perceive how those who elevated him saw him as a performing monkey. Still, it’s long past time for Anglophone academia to stop thinking that it’s immoral to evaluate black scholars on the basis of whether they are—get ready!—intelligent.

Compared with some other examples of the genre, Arday’s mendacity and incompetence are especially stupefying. But he is nonetheless a symptom of academia’s dehumanization of black scholars and willingness to accept intellectual mediocrity in its self-seeking pursuit of virtue.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John McWhorter (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.