John McWhorter

John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V (born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. He has authored a number of books on race relations and African-American culture, acting as political commentator especially in his New York Times newsletter.
Early life and education
McWhorter was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father, John Hamilton McWhorter IV (1927–1996), was a college administrator, and his mother, Schelysture Gordon McWhorter (1937–2011), taught social work at Temple University. He attended Friends Select School in Philadelphia and, after tenth grade, was accepted to Simon's Rock College, where he earned an AA degree. McWhorter, born to a bureaucrat and a professor, has described his upbringing as part of the Black middle class. He has also attributed some of his views to the Quaker school he attended as a child.
Later, he attended Rutgers University and received a BA degree in French in 1985. He obtained an MA degree in American Studies from New York University and a PhD degree in linguistics in 1993 from Stanford University.
Career
Academia
Early career
McWhorter taught linguistics at Cornell University from 1993 to 1995, then became an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked from 1995 until 2003. He left that position to become a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
Columbia University
Since 2008, he has taught linguistics, American studies, and classes in the core curriculum program at Columbia University. As Columbia's Department of Linguistics had been dissolved in 1989, McWhorter was initially assigned to the Department of English and Comparative Literature. The Program of Linguistics (including a revived undergraduate major as of 2021) is currently housed in the Department of Slavic Languages.
Other teaching
McWhorter is the professor of the courses "The Story of Human Language"; "Understanding Linguistics: The Science of Language"; "Myths, Lies and Half-Truths About English Usage"; "Language Families of the World"; and "Language From A to Z" in the series The Great Courses, produced by the Teaching Company.
Writing and commentary
News organizations
McWhorter has written for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Politico, Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, City Journal, The New York Sun, The New Yorker, The Root, The Daily Beast, and CNN.
McWhorter was contributing editor at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014. He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and, after writing op-eds for The New York Times for several years, became an Opinion columnist there in 2021.
He hosts the Lexicon Valley podcast for Slate from 2016 to 2021, and currently for Booksmart Studios.
Books
McWhorter has published a number of books on linguistics and on race relations, including Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why You Should, Like, Care, and Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.
Linguistics
Much of McWhorter's academic work is concerned with creole languages and their relationship to other languages, often focusing on the Suriname creole language Saramaccan. His work has expanded to a general investigation of the effect of second-language acquisition on a language.
In January 2017, McWhorter was a speaker in the Linguistic Society of America's inaugural Public Lectures on Language series.
Regarding the various positions arising from the universal grammar debate, he describes himself as partial to the theoretical frameworks of Peter Culicover and Ray Jackendoff.
Theory of creole
McWhorter has argued that languages naturally tend toward complexity and irregularity, a tendency that is reversed only by adults acquiring the language, and creole formation is simply an extreme example of the latter. As examples, he cites English, Mandarin Chinese, Persian, the modern colloquial varieties of Arabic, Swahili, and Indonesian. He has outlined his ideas in academic format in Language Interrupted and Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity and, for the general public, in What Language Is and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.
Specific application
McWhorter has been a proponent of a theory which postulates that various languages on the island of Flores underwent transformation because of aggressive migrations from the nearby island of Sulawesi. He has further contended that English was influenced by the Celtic languages spoken by the indigenous population and which were then encountered by the Germanic invaders of Britain. He has also written various articles that argue that colloquial constructions, such as the modern uses of "like" and "totally", and other non-standard speech should be considered alternative renditions of English rather than degraded ones.
The Language Hoax
McWhorter is a vocal critic of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. In his 2014 book The Language Hoax, he outlines how, that although language influences thought in an "infinitesimal way" and culture is expressed through language, he believes that language itself does not create different ways of thinking or determine world views.
Language proficiency
McWhorter is proficient in English, French and Spanish, and has some competence in Russian and several other languages.
Criticism of theories
Some of McWhorter's fellow linguists, such as Mauro Giuffré of the University of Palermo, suggest that his notions of simplicity and complexity are impressionistic and grounded on comparisons with European languages, and they point to exceptions to his proposed correlations.
Political views
McWhorter has characterized himself as "a cranky liberal Democrat". In support of this description, he states that while he "disagree[s] sustainedly with many of the tenets of the Civil Rights orthodoxy", he also "supports Barack Obama, reviles the War on Drugs, supports gay marriage, never voted for George W. Bush and writes of Black English as coherent speech".
McWhorter has stated that the conservative Manhattan Institute, for which he worked, "has always been hospitable to Democrats". McWhorter is biweekly guest on The Glenn Show, a commentary podcast hosted by Glenn Loury, a member of the Manhattan Institute and professor of economics at Brown University.
Political theorist Mark Satin identifies McWhorter as a radical centrist thinker.
Views on racism
In a 2001 article, McWhorter's discourse was that the attitudes and general behavior of black people, rather than white racism, were what held African Americans back in the United States. According to McWhorter, "victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism underlie the general black community's response to all race-related issues", and "it's time for well-intentioned whites to stop pardoning as 'understandable' the worst of human nature whenever black people exhibit it".
Racism and language
In April 2015, McWhorter appeared on NPR and said that the use of the word "thug" was becoming code for "the N-word" or "black people ruining things" when used by whites in reference to criminal activity. He added that use by President Barack Obama and former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (for which she later apologized) could not be interpreted in the same way, given that among blacks the use of "thug" often connotes admiration for black self-direction and survival. McWhorter clarified his views in an article in The Washington Post.
Racism and technology
McWhorter has argued that software algorithms by themselves cannot be racist since, unlike humans, they lack intention. Rather, unless the human engineers behind a technological product intend for it to discriminate against people of a particular ethnicity, any unintentional bias should be seen as a software bug that needs to be fixed ("an obstacle to achievement") rather than an issue of racism.
Race and education
McWhorter has criticized left-wing and activist educators in particular, such as Paulo Freire and Jonathan Kozol.
McWhorter has criticized both fearmongering and dismissal of concerns over the usage of critical race theory in education. McWhorter argued in a New York Times op-ed that "if critical race theory isn’t being taught to children — and in a technical sense, it isn’t — then it’s hardly illogical to suppose that some other concern may be afoot." McWhorter argues instead for continued concern over critical race influenced teaching, which McWhorter worries would be simplistic if taught to children and ineffective to produce nuanced discussion.
McWhorter has argued that affirmative action should be based on class rather than race.
Views on anti-racism
McWhorter has posited that anti-racism has become as harmful in the United States as racism itself. McWhorter has criticized the term "microaggression", as well as what he regards as the overly casual conflation of racial bias with white supremacy. As early as December 2018, McWhorter described anti-racism as a "religious movement".
McWhorter criticized Robin DiAngelo's 2018 book White Fragility following its resurgence in sales during the George Floyd protests beginning in May 2020, arguing that it "openly infantilized Black people" and "simply dehumanized us", and "does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching [for residual racism by white people] is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good."
Woke Racism
In his 2021 book Woke Racism, McWhorter expands upon these views and argues that "third wave anti-racism" is a religion he terms "Electism" with white privilege as original sin. McWhorter likens the books White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist and Between the World and Me to sacred religious texts. He argues that this hypothesized status as a religion explains the behavior of its adherents, whom he calls "the Elect". He advises that since the faith (like all faith) is not open to discussion, arguments with its adherents should be avoided in favor of pragmatic action against racism. McWhorter advocates three programs: ending the war on drugs, teaching reading by phonics to children lacking books at home, and free vocational education, promoting the idea that not everyone needs a four-year college education to succeed. McWhorter has expressed qualified support for reparations for African Americans, particularly those descended from victims of redlining.
Personal life
McWhorter separated from his wife in 2019. He has two daughters. He plays the piano and has appeared in musical theater productions.
McWhorter is an atheist.
Bibliography
1997: Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis
1998: Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a "Pure" Standard English
2000: Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect in America
2000: The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth of Plantation Contact Languages
2000: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
2001: The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
2003: Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority
2003: Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care
2005: Defining Creole
2005: Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America
2007: Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars
2008: All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America
2008: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
2011: Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity: Why Do Languages Undress?
2011: What Language Is: (And What It Isn't and What It Could Be)
2012: A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole (co-authored with Jeff Good)
2014: The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language
2016: Words on the Move: Why English Won't – and Can't – Sit Still (Like, Literally)
2017: Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths about America's Lingua Franca
2018: The Creole Debate
2021: Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever
2021: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America
References
External links
McWhorter's blog at The New Republic
1965 births
Living people
20th-century African-American people
20th-century linguists
21st-century African-American people
21st-century linguists
African-American atheists
African-American non-fiction writers
African-American social scientists
American atheists
American non-fiction writers
American social scientists
American social sciences writers
Columbia University faculty
Cornell University faculty
Educators from Philadelphia
Friends Select School alumni
Linguists from the United States
Linguists of pidgins and creoles
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
New York (state) Democrats
New York University alumni
Pennsylvania Democrats
Radical centrist writers
Rutgers University alumni
Stanford University alumni
University of California, Berkeley faculty
Writers from Philadelphia