Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.
John H. McWhorterPeople have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
John H. McWhorterWe must neither behave as children by resisting honesty, nor allow ourselves to be treated as children by having honesty withheld.
John H. McWhorterNo longer can we measure compassion by how much we spend on poverty but how many people we help to lift out of poverty.
John H. McWhorterThe black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so.
John H. McWhorter