John McWhorter – Race, Reparations, and Jordan Neely
Episode description
0:00 John: “I love linguistics, but it no longer loves me”
9:44 How Glenn and John are getting written out of their fields
19:27 Jordan Neely didn’t deserve to die …
27:28 … but the New York subway is getting scary
37:45 Glenn: Reparations would be “impractical, unfair, and divisive in the extreme”
50:50 A possible left-wing objection to reparations
57:22 Glenn goes ham on reparations
Recorded May 18, 2023
Links and Readings
Steven Pinker’s book, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
John’s book, Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths about America’s Lingua Franca
John’s book, Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of “Pure” Standard English
John’s language podcast, Lexicon Valley
John, Our Magnificent B*****d Tongue: The Untold History of English
John’s NYT piece about Jordan Neely, “A Killing on the F Train”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 Atlantic essay, “The Case for Reparations”
Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond’s new book, Poverty, by America
Glenn’s conversation with Norman Finkelstein
August Wilson’s play, Two Trains Running
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