JOHN MCWHORTER MAY 1, 2009
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It looks like William Saletan over at Slate learned his lesson too well. He was shot at like a varmint a couple years ago after writing some columns on evidence that black people are genetically less gifted mentally than whites. Now, announcing that he "learned his lesson the hard way," reads evidence in the Times that No Child Left Behind is not closing the black-white student performance gap and studiously asks why we need to even tabulate the results by race anyway.
Studiously, indeed, because Saletan is too bright and too seasoned a writer not to understand the simple fact that No Child Left Behind was part of a quest to raise black students' scholarly performance to the level of other students'. This is hardly an obscure historical datum folks may reasonably have forgotten.
I find it hard to imagine that Saletan has seen the countless books and articles on the black-white performance gap and scratched his head wondering just what the epistemological or historical groundings were for addressing race as a metric. He may well have attended events on the subject--and not as an unenlightened naif slipping under the tent to get a gander at mysterious goings-on. Saletan knows the score.
Why would a nationally prominent journalist pretend not to understand why National Assessment of Educational Progress data is broken down by race, as if he lives in a different country--or century--than his own? Because what he learned from his drubbing in 2007 is that any findings that shed less than positive light on black people are, quite simply, inappropriate for public viewing.
People of Saletan's new leaning have things like the New Haven shell game as a model, where when black applicants don't hit the highest note on a promotion test, the PC solution is to craftily tar the test as "racist" and discount its results. Just as that is antithetical to what getting past race is supposed to mean, we will not pretend that it's okay that black students don't read and do math as well as white kids in order to provide a way for people like William Saletan to demonstrate that they aren't racists.
What worries Saletan, he says, is that openly racist bloggers like Steve Sailer are using the NAEP results as evidence that black people really are less intelligent than others. That is a lovely gesture of concern--but only that, and we forget how feeble these kinds of gestures are.
Sailer is a distinctly unlovely phenomenon, I know. When I started writing about race, he contacted me, out of a mistaken sense that as the "black Republican right winger" many assumed I was for simply having certain "controversial" views. It's the kind of thing people sometimes warn me about, as if merely having an exchange with such a person leaves me physically tarred with some substance that will impede my life thereafter.
It did not. I read some of Sailer's work and that of people in line with him; I perused on line discussions. Nasty little business, it was: yes, ladies and gentleman, there are racists "out there." And not just skinhead types talking violence--these people were latte-sipping burghers with advanced degrees.
And here is the very simple question: what effect do people like this have on, well, anything the rest of us care about? Yes, the inevitable observation must be made - here it comes: while those bozos were chattering away year after year, we elected a black president (a look at Sailer's blog lately shows he doesn't like that either--and can't do a thing about it).
So--I am uncompelled by the argument that we must hide the NAEP data because of people like Steve Sailer and his pals.
As is, I suspect, Saletan. He is gesturing, idly. It reminds me of the grammatical hoax that the pronoun me can't be used as a subject, such that Billy and me went to the store is "a mistake" (never mind that it would not be in French, as well as countless other arguments). Because the rule has nothing to do with how English grammar works, all most people learn when swatted at for saying Billy and me is "don't use me after and." The result: people saying between you and I, in which I is not a subject, thus creating another "mistake" people sneer at.
In the same way, when Saletan wrote about the evidence on black intelligence, in a polite, informed way, it was a sign of our times that so many people were appalled at his having even brought up the topic. Counterarguments were appropriate and welcome, but the moral crusading was PC at its worst. Its lesson was that certain things simply cannot be even broached regardless of evidence--and even if ample data exists to contradict said evidence.
That is a visceral, unscientific position, of the kind that leads to similarly visceral, unscientific positions--such as that we should stop attending to the black-white performance gap (or at least only do so under wraps, which largely amounts to the same thing) because of the chipper chatterings of some smug bigots huddling together in chat groups here and there.
Mr. Saletan, I'm sorry, but we don't need that kind of protection. I'd almost take the open racism of Sailer to anti-racism that makes no coherent sense and calls for putting a brake on the progress of those the racism applies to.
13 comments
"the grammatical hoax that the pronoun me can’t be used as a subject, such that Billy and me went to the store is “a mistake” (never mind that it would not be in French, as well as countless other arguments). "
Well, the French thing isn't a good argument, so what are some of the "other arguments"?
Something can be correct in one language but incorrect in another. For instance, a double negative is often required in French and Italian; to refrain from using a double negative would be incorrect. In English, it's the opposite. You can claim you don't find double negatives or "Billy and me" as a subject incorrect, but I doubt you'd be willing to practice what you preach. I've read many of your writings and have heard you speak (on TV and Bloggingheads), and I haven't noticed you committing any grammatical errors. Apparently, you do think it's important to follow the traditional rules, even if you're willing to say in theory that such rules have "nothing to do with how English grammar works."
Of course, the fact that "Billy and me" is correct as an *object* doesn't show it's correct as a *subject*. If anything, this example just emphasizes that there's a right time and a wrong time to use "Billy and me."
- jaltcoh.blogspot.com
May 1, 2009 at 11:22am
Using double negatives and "me" as a subject work perfectly well- every native English speaker will fully understand what you're saying. It's just that they're also class identifiers. McWhorter using them would be an affectation, same as if he said "ain't" and "y'all".
- Simon Greenwood
May 1, 2009 at 10:27pm
I read Saletan regularly, and sometimes his biological relativism and his moral values seem to collide, but in this instance I am not sure what your peeve is, Mr. McWhorter. Are you implying that this gap is a chimera based on white assumptions about intelligence? Or that the racial dynamic within education is still relevant? I am also not sure what your balk over grammar usage amounts to, since one can easily dismiss prescriptive rule demands in favor of studying how groups use SVO structures. Or is it merely a case of damned if we do, damned if we don't, as usual? I am disabled, and I interact with African Americans regularly, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, and I am not unaware of my own bias, but I am also not unaware that I am discussed in a derogatory fashion by minorities who hold their own stereotypes about the disabled. I think there are enough sins on all sides to go around.
Maybe I am too stupid to understand what you want Saletan to concede, but in any case, your argument is lost on me here. *Difference* is not necessarily a prerequisite to dehumanizing tendencies, not in my book.
- Jozanny
May 2, 2009 at 5:31pm
I don't think many people would say "Billy and me went to the store". Folks who use "me" as a subject would say "Me and Billy went to the store".
English dialects and standard English all have their grammatical rules. That fact is not an argument in favor of a permissive attitude toward bad grammar.
- bulbman1066
May 3, 2009 at 12:32pm
I don't think McWhorter's indignation is about standard grammar over and above black vernacular, but if I really wanted to let my hair down over his, or Saletan's point, I'd probably get into trouble, and I don't see any honor in that, as mutual respect between peoples cannot be forced, and I am not here to ingratiate myself with black conservatism any more than McWhorter would care for my approval.
Given that, however, I don't think Saletan was playing himself or his readers false when he merely asked why aptitude needs to be quantified along racial categories. I don't always agree with Saletan, and I intuit underlying contradictions in his columns about the cutting edge in medical technology, but I suppose TNR keeps making money on enlarging molehills to the point of ridicule.
People with cerebral palsy have different medical stressors than people with spina bifida, but we do not constantly quarrel or kill each other over perceived slights.
- Jozanny
May 3, 2009 at 1:23pm
It seems to me that McWhorter is saying that race-based analyis of educational performance, if it shows e.g. blacks underperforming as against whites, should not be ignored just because it might provide grist to open racists.
- ironyroad
May 3, 2009 at 7:03pm
"Using double negatives and "me" as a subject work perfectly well- every native English speaker will fully understand what you're saying."
I reject the implication that language is perfectly correct as long as the listener/reader "fully understands what you're saying." If you say something that strikes the audience as "wrong," then it's bad, even if they can figure out what were *trying* to say. Someone who's just learning English will put together awkward sentences that I may be able to fully understand if I try hard, but this person is still not speaking as correctly as a native speaker.
- johnalthousecohen
May 4, 2009 at 8:03am
I wrote:
If you say something that strikes the audience as "wrong," then it's bad, even if they can figure out what were *trying* to say
I should have added a "you": "even if they can figure out what you were trying to say."
See what I mean??
- jaltcoh.blogspot.com
May 4, 2009 at 2:23pm
That example contradicts what you mean, though. Your error wasn't a superficial grammatical mistake, it was something that obfuscated meaning.
As for "striking the listener as wrong" then you're just giving primacy to grammar school listeners over lower class listeners. Saying "Billy and I did X" strikes some kinds of people as wrong and "Me and Billy did X" as right.
- Simon Greenwood
May 4, 2009 at 7:03pm
"Your error wasn't a superficial grammatical mistake, it was something that obfuscated meaning."
Really? You couldn't figure out my meaning? I'll bet you could.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree about the correctness of "Billy and me did X." Still, I see no reason why "Can you *understand* it?" should be the standard for whether something's *correct*. The former is a much lower threshold than the latter.
- jaltcoh.blogspot.com
May 5, 2009 at 10:18am
What bothers me in discussions like this is the lack of attention given to the gross under-representation in the Ivy League of the largest class/cultural/ethnic group in America, namely, while working-class Americans in the South and Mid-West. They are an absolute majority in our democracy and yet have almost no representation in the upper reaches of our governing elites. Why? Because the admissions committees at Harvard and Yale don't give a damn, a fact that was first brought home to me while reading Ross Douthouts memoire of his days at Harvard.
I used to be opposed to affirmative action, and still am at places like Cal Tech and MIT. But at Harvard and Yale I now favor affirmative action for all, by which I mean for every state and county in America in proportion to the various ethnic groups that reside in them. Either that or break those two insitutions up and spread the pieces around the country. They are defacto national institutions.
It is unhealthy in a democracy when the governing elites are not drawn from a cross section of the people as a whole. Witness the fate of Ohio and Michigan, or California for that matter.
- lukelea
May 5, 2009 at 10:53am
I think Saletan's rebuttal undetermines McWhorter's chip-on-the-shoulder smirk. even if I am not quite clear what the said smirk is gunning for. McWhorter doesn't like a genetic apologia for racist attitudes, but by the same token, a white journalist cannot challenge the metric by which the gap is arrived at in the first place.
Intelligence is rather elusive in biological terms, and I don't need Saletan to remind me of that. McWhorter needs to refine his terms of engagement.
- Jozanny
May 5, 2009 at 12:58pm
...It seems to me that McWhorter is saying that race-based analyis of educational performance, if it shows e.g. blacks underperforming as against whites, should not be ignored just because it might provide grist to open racists...
That['s what he's saying alright, all the points about *proper* grammar notwithstanding.
It's fair enough for McWhorter to make that point and even go on for a while about and against folks like Saletan.
But finally all the twisting and turning about whether to ignore the performance gap, and obviously it needs to be aired, is simply the beginning of the beginning.
What accounts for it, these days in 2009, in comparisons between similarly situated groups (socio economically situated)? That's what I want to know and would want to see McWhorter address it head on and substantively, rather than all this okay dancing. As, finally, this all, after all, is just tripping the light fantastic.
- basman
May 8, 2009 at 10:58pm