John McWhorter
@JohnHMcWhorter
Columbia linguist, weekly at NYT, biweekly Glenn Show. Books of late: 9 NASTY WORDS, WOKE RACISM and PRONOUN TROUBLE. Some cabaret piano on the side.
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My piece for this week. It used to be Racism 101 that tokenism was wrong. After 2020 somehow it became okay -- wokenism -- and Arday got snagged into it.
What she said!
Come spend some time with @JohnHMcWhorter and me at @chq next Tuesday morning. We say amusing and occasionally smart things, and play a little piano.
Another wonderful post from @laradownes' new Substack. This time: the story of William Levi Dawson's incredible symphony and the life he lived.
No engagement with the arrant lies, the massive plagiarism, the airy public addresses. Kendi thinks all of that is okay if you're Black (and have dreadlocks) and that Arday was still a legitimate academic seized upon because of his color.
Kendi thinks Blackness exempts one from amassing data, drawing connections, and presenting novel insights. You're the real thing in just showing racism exists, despite that this is a rote exercise. We don't have to be actually smart, and in fact shouldn't (too "Western"). We are authentic in eternally "contesting."
That take is deep if you (have dreadlocks and) changed your name to Kendi.
Note that he seems not to have worked out at the Atlantic, and publishes this soapbox performance art somewhere you're a little surprised a public "intellectual" of his status would choose.
I wish Arday were alive. But this take on Arday as lynched is performance art. American academia should hesitate to embrace it.
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The death of Jason Arday hit so close to home that I had no words yesterday. But I woke up with words.
To be a prominent antiracist Black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments. You know that at any point, the attacks can come like a lynch mob.
And if you die from all the attacks, the media still calls the attacks on you “accusations” to wash their hands of the blood. Your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching.
My latest at The Emancipator.
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What I said to this unreasoning person.
This is the last time I will respond to one of your posts. You think what makes you interesting is pretending nothing has changed on racism since 1960 except window-dressing. If you haven't seen what Tyler Harper did in all of your jobs, it's because you were sitting in meetings agreeing with it. You should indeed be ashamed for hating on Tyler's piece.
Please be interested in something besides hating what white people did? Sooner or later you will pass on -- is that what you want your main legacy to be? What did "ijbailey" do that anyone will remember other than hate on whiteness in performative exaggeration? Don't you seek more? What is there about YOU and your individuality that humankind should look at and value?
Really, I will have no response to anything you say. As I wrote, you are unreachable. It has bedeviled me since 2020. Mic-drop. I have a book to write, which is NOT about Calling Whiteness to Account. Do you have a book coming, and is it about just life and what interests you -- or is it about what white people do wrong? But I'm not really asking -- I shouldn't have responded to you the first time. Out.
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This is the last time I will respond to one of your posts. You think what makes you interesting is pretending nothing has changed on racism since 1960 except window-dressing. If you haven't seen what Tyler Harper did in all of your jobs, it's because you were sitting in meetings agreeing with it. You should indeed be ashamed for hating on Tyler's piece.
Please be interested in something besides hating what white people did? Sooner or later you will pass on -- is that what you want your main legacy to be? What did "ijbailey" do that anyone will remember other than hate on whiteness in performative exaggeration? Don't you seek more? What is there about YOU and your individuality that humankind should look at and value?
Really, I will have no response to anything you say. As I wrote, you are unreachable. It has bedeviled me since 2020. Mic-drop. I have a book to write, which is NOT about Calling Whiteness to Account. Do you have a book coming, and is it about just life and what interests you -- or is it about what white people do wrong? But I'm not really asking -- I shouldn't have responded to you the first time. Out.
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My Arday piece here too
This is utterly perfect and should stand forever as a go-to representation of a major problem with education in our era. It also happens to give a look-in at what I describe in my piece today about Arday.
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My take on the Arday debacle. Elevator pitch version: 1) Arday is typical of a thriving alternate-universe academia elevating performance art over curiosity; 2) the "anti-racist" people who supported him are either bigots or caught up in recreational tribalism.
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More of me with CLOSING NIGHT, on how Black music deeply informed what the Broadway musical became. This is a story not told enough, and stay tuned for more of it in the book John Mauceri and I (mostly him) wrote, coming in November.
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Here's a dandy session I did on the musical Cabin in the Sky (which was a Broadway show before the MGM film and quite a different thing) on CLOSING NIGHT. Always fun to stretch out.
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A fantabulous piece by Jeremy Denk on the Emily Wilson review of The Odyssey and ... the pranking in Beethoven's piano writing! I'm in awe.
I co-wrote a book on the interracial history of the Broadway musical with Maestro John Mauceri. Goodreads is doing a giveaway here.
No, detractors. On Trump:
"..a delusion, megalomania, and dimness paralleled in public figures today only by America's President."
I stand by it, will endlessly repeat it, and work daily to understand why anyone would disagree.
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Read this man's resignation letter and witness a delusion, megalomania, and dimness paralleled in public figures today only by America's President.
Apparently the letter is AI. But from all we have learned about his "scholarship," of course he was incapable of composing intelligent prose himself.
The whites who elevated Arday think Black people are dumb. And yes, it could have happened here.
Yes, I am leaving some stuff unsaid.
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My music people - support my friend @laradownes on her new Substack. She will tell you everything you wanted to know about how classical music became American and how America became the wellspring of the best pop music on earth.
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Language is all about piling it on from generation to generation. It's what lots of slang is based on, it's why we say "bye bye," it's how the word "yes" happened, it's the excessive exclamation points. It's even "yessireeBob"!
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I assume Arday knows that people are out there researching all of his fabulistic claims now. The other shoe will drop soon. 95% of it is clearly lies he has told thinking he's in the previous century where they'd be harder to disprove. Will Cambridge insist that the refutation is "racist"? Medieval thought, complete with the unabashed racism.
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This piece sums up this episode perfectly. Another tragedy in cases like this is that he will pass on his version of what research and serious thought is to students and assorted mentees. And goodness, dreadlocks seem to have a narcotic effect on some people in academia and publishing. I can't help wondering whether this guy would have been taken up like this if he had short hair.
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