Is Negro a Slur or Just Antiquated?

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• 00:03

  From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

• 00:08

  I'm John McWhorter, and you know,

• 00:10

  this show is going to be a little less fun than I at least hope some of the shows are going to be

• 00:16

  because I need to address certain matters.

• 00:20

  They're things that you hear about again and again, and you know, it's time for me to take a stand.

• 00:27

  And as you might guess,

• 00:28

  given that this is a language podcast and the sorts of things that one or I might take a stand about,

• 00:34

  this is going to be one of my rare shows where I address what we might call race issues.

• 00:41

  And specifically, of course, Black English.

• 00:45

  What I'm usually doing on this show is trying to indicate ways in which Black English is cool,

• 00:50

  and not just in terms of its atmosphere,

• 00:52

  but in terms of just how it's built as a grammar,

• 00:56

  just what it's like in terms of its historical change over time.

• 01:01

  But here, I want to talk about some things about Black English that are less fun than that,

• 01:06

  but that I think are going to be just as educational

• 01:08

  as me talking about how Black English handles tense or what its verb to be is like or what it was like in 1890 versus 1990.

• 01:17

  So I'm going to address, briskly, Three things.

• 01:21

  And we're not going to have particular semi-relevant,

• 01:25

  usually musical theater music selections in this show,

• 01:28

  because when I do shows like this, I get the feeling that would come off as a little trivial.

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