John McWhorter

[JimBowie1133]

I disagree with his premise that people look to hip hop for political directions. Especially modern day its pure entertainment. I believe it is obvious that Hip Hop as an artistic expression does have the ability, depending on content, to spark a political consciousness in its listeners. Just as any artistic medium has that potential.

[juicykarkass]

John McWhorter rules! I read every book of his I can find!

[SlashFan60]

Also, saying racism "isn't as important as it used to be" may be true on an individual level, that doesn't mean that the historical institutions which redlined black communities and to this day create cultural norms which marginalize issues of race don't perpetuate problems for black communities. Individual bigotry may have decreased, but now you have a bunch of post-racialists running around saying race isn't important, and ignoring the result of years of race-based oppressive policies.

[SlashFan60]

I agree with his analysis, but I think that he ignores a large part of hip hop that still exists in the underground and in its historical origins. Also, it's easy to say "let's teach individual blacks how to take advantage of capitalism" without actually trying to figure out how a capitalist ruling class would encourage such a program in a community with no resources of its own to attempt it.

[migbee]

He's a linguistics professor, and he says "I'm good"?

[gnarctopus]

@migbee you obviously don't know what linguistics is actually about. we are not language police. i say "hella" constantly. and i don't care if you think it's "wrong", because i know better.

[migbee]

@gnarctopus The proper way to reply would have been "I'm well." He's not exactly making a strong case for his credentials when he uses improper grammar. That's all I was trying to say. Oh, and saying hella makes you sound like a hella tool. Hang loose, bra!

[gnarctopus]

@migbee no, you still don't understand: there is no improper grammar. find me a linguist that says that and i'll mail you one hundred dollars, how's that. all you're doing is taking your subjective tastes concerning language and couching them objectively. and dumbass no one says hang loose bra in california anymore. square.

[migbee]

@gnarctopus There is improper grammar. Why else would we have English classes? I understand that "I'm good" still conveys the same message as "I'm well" but then what exactly is he professing? Anybody can talk however they want. You don't need a degree to write books on that shit. I'd expect an expert on linguistics to use proper grammar. That's all.

Bro, gnarly wipeout! Cowabunga!

[gnarctopus]

@migbee now that i think about it you're a double dumbass because even according to your own (wrong) prescriptive logic, the whole always using "well" to say things like "I'm well" or "I don't feel well" has been re-thought by prescriptivists for a long time. I know why, but I want you to put your money where your mouth is and tell me why that would be so. Do you even know the logic behind your own "rules"? Dont even try to call out McWhorter on some bullshit, son. Get at some linguistics books.

[migbee]

@gnarctopus U mad bro?

[exavierpope]

Great interview, but I disagree with Hip Hop can't save America. His focus is in the wrong place. He made a comment the Prez had to show his knowledge of hip to appeal to "young people". There's your link. He didn't say "black people", but young people. As Prez's tenure will change the way a whole generation sees opportunity for lofty offices, hip hop's permeation in the conscious made it socially acceptable to appreciate and enjoy blackness unashamedly. It lead way for Mr. Prez.

[Yellothar4]

 Reading his book 'The Power of Babel' right now. Great stuff.

[darrelldwilliams]

Great clip; awesome perspectives--insightful

[darrelldwilliams]

Great perspectives.

[TheLogicJunkie]

Kool Moe Dee WAS actually different.

[peacexbass]

As a linguist, this man is great. Apparently he's a good sociologist as well. Who would have thought?

[logicCplusplus]

Very smart guy!

Just watched a video of him and Micheal Behe

[seanpdineen]

He is correct.

Progress cant come without, effort and a larger goal

[seanpdineen]

As a person with a disabilty, I have experienced a different said of attitutes.

The concept of a victum, is seductive, I struggle with that, but quitting is counter productive

[selam57]

Wow. i really want to speak and write like him.

[MetaSensuality1983]

I agree with a lot of what he says but black people should just turn the hip hop off completely. It's embarrassing and gong to partially destroy us as a people.

[usaexpatriateact]

Try Immortal Technique or Greydon Square. THAT'S the real rap McWhorter is trying to get the industry to produce.

[thirdeyewise2]

"Riot insurance".............that's on point.

[angela1894]

John McWhorter looks sullen. His face is incredibly oily, and his cheeks seem swollen. But I like his views.

[sandroeleven]

@angela1894 Were you born in 1894??? where do ppl comefrom with these views.

[chrisx2k6]

@angela1894 LoL...That comment was all over the place.

[sammy1324]

Funny how black people criticize the one black guy who tells the truth. John McWhorter is a hero.

[theleftflank]

@sammy1324 Ahh that's not true. I'm black & I agree with him. Unfortunately, he has this preppie-feel to him which immediately allows for his words to be misinterpreted as snobbish-elitism by many blacks. Also, there is this benign sorta constructive criticism that he offers which could work, if he'd only exhibit more passion - he should know this. Anyway, he's not the only black guy telling the truth out there, just the only black guy whose version of the truth you find agreeable. Oh well.

[sol15g]

hes an idiot!

[emahunn]

Ha! 'There may be a [inner racist] in white people but I don't care.'

I wonder if John McWhorter has ever read Freud, Lacan, Adler, Zizek, and we can go on? Each time I hear him speak, I can only think of the accurate criticisms made by Houston Baker in his book 'Betrayal.' This is shameful...

[madchemist5926]

Yes, but how do these people effect the daily lives of most Black Americans? McWhorter is basically saying that you should deal with racism when it rears it's ugly head like, say, in the workplace, but that it serves no purpose for Black people (especially the poor) to make White people see how racist they are. How will this help them? Will White people admitting their racism magically lift these people out of the ghettos? McWhorter does alot of political baiting, but on race he's very pragmatic

[emahunn]

@madchemist5926 This is exactly my point. If he has ever read the works of these authors, he would know that the unconscious manifests itself in the conscious eventually. Far be it from anyone of intelligence to argue that 'once whites admit that they are racist, Blacks problems will be solved.' Everyone knows that it is more complicated than this. Stokely Carmichael knew this in the late 1960s, so McWhorter is saying nothing new...he is just pretending as if he is...

[kuongjah7]

He says "it's been a magic moment..." I wonder if you know what that really means?

[gousnavy]

He speaks like a black man. I'm not racist.

[followyourideas]

He speaks like a white man, doesn't he? I'm not a racist by the way...

[danielsimonon]

He's a professor with a doctorate in linguistics, what do you expect?

[followyourideas]

Barack Obama is the president of the United States and you can tell that he's black for the way he speaks. Education has nothing to do...

[danielsimonon]

Barack Obama was a lawyer, not a linguistics doctorate. I'm fairly confident that when you make language your life's work, it has a significant influence on your own linguistic tendencies.

[FuckUtube2008]

he sounds even whiter then white people! lol.

[VegasSkateCulture]

@FuckUtube2008

I don't know if your white or black, and do not care to check, but there is no such thing as sounding "white". He studies the English language for a living, and he articulates the way any English professor would. your an idiot.

[emahunn]

What is he talking about? This is why scholars, for the most part, need to stay away from discussions of hip hop. Has he ever heard Nas's "I Can," Talib Kweli's "KOS Determination," "Umi Says," by Mos Def, "Ladies First" by Queen Latifah? Hip hop is filled with solutions, in which the solution happens to be ourselves, not authority.

Scholars like McWhorter are using hip hop as a way to sell books. We are seeing a huge departure from what Houston Baker presented in 1992. Damn!

[areyouquitemad]

By Nas's "i can", are you referring to the song where he talks about white people were living in mud huts while 'black' people were really the ancient Egyptians inventing helicopters and predicting quantum theory?!

I think your view of hip hops contribution to alleviating the condition of poor black americans is exactly the 'solutions' that McWhorter is disputing!! The message is white people are inferior to us and we're going to claim another peoples culture!

How is that a solution?!

[emahunn]

Be, be, 'fore we came to this country We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys It was empires in Africa called Kush Timbuktu, where every race came to get books To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans Asian Arabs and gave them gold when Gold was converted to money it all changed Money then became empowerment for Europeans The Persian military invaded They learned about the gold, the teachings and everything sacred Africa was almost robbed naked

[emahunn]

As you see from my earlier post, and you can check the entire last verse of the song, Nas mentions NOTHING about Egyptians inventing helicopters or whites living in mud huts.

Furthermore, you missed my entire point. Solutions come from the people, not hip hop

The recent scholarship emerging concerning ancient Greek philosophy and its borrowings from African philosophy is being recognized as something to be taken into serious consideration. Nas's depiction of history does not seem distorted

[eirefrance]

@areyouquitemad "I Can" does refer to a revisionist past, but its purpose is good. Confidence is an important part of success, and all Nas is trying to do is give a sense of confidence to black kids. Maybe its a revisionist sense of confidence, but everyone's confidence requires revisionism. I don't remember the times I couldn't get it hard, I remember the times I made her cum 8 times. It helps remind me what a badass I really am.

[emahunn]

Three points:

1) Which rapper asserted that hip hop could save America?

2) Hip hop is not only cynical, especially to authoriy, to use McWhorter's arguments, which is bogus, but it is cynical when it comes to itself--that is, it questions leadership in ALL its forms.

3) Hip hop would never posit itself as a solution. If we truly believe that hip hop, or at least the hip hop of which McWhorter speaks, is truly organic, then it holds that people make change, not hip hop.

DAMN!

[BPL1980]

Let me try...

1) Just off the top of my head; Public Enemy. Their music is filled with group-level revolutionary language which implores black youth to 'rise up' in a vaguely militaristic way which is cloaked in faux intellectualism.

2) So you're saying McWhorter's claim that hip-hop's focus on anti-authoritarianism is 'bogus' and actually rappers express doubt of themselves as being able to effect a change? I've seen no evidence of this.

3). Ok - but this seems like a chicken/egg argument.

[emahunn]

1) Public Enemy was a product of a larger movement that was incorporating elements of the Black Power and Black Arts Movement into their music. Indeed, they implored people to rise up, but they never offered solutions as to how programs should be implemented.

2) The operative term of the indefinite article 'a'. That is, rappers can be catalysts or even impetuses, but they can never be the change nor can they be the solution, for as Nas says, 'we trust no Black leaders'

[emahunn]

continue from 2) This includes hip hop artists

3) My argument was not that rappers cannot affect (not effect) change. My argument is that rappers do not offer solutions because solutions come from people in the community. If McWhorter knew anything about the music of Talib Kweli, a rapper he mentions in his text, he would know that Kweli, in his song 'I Try' explicitly stated the following:

'the 'hood need us, but rappers just ain't the right leaders.'

Selective quoting by McWhorter...

[De4sher]

He's cool

[texastootall]

this guy doesn't know anything about hip hop or black people...He only knows about commercial and corporate hip hop.

[HenryMuldrow]

Excellent! Thanks John.

[wataki2]

listening to john is like church to me.....

[jmood88]

I feel sorry for you.