Voice of DISSENT - John McWhorter - Interview

The professors who say they've never seen this, with only one exception, are professors who are teaching what you might call "Black courses" or courses whose subjects are particularly directed toward the victim culture. My thumbnail hypothesis is that African American students might tend to devote themselves more wholeheartedly to courses like this, that would speak to them spiritually in this way. What you don't hear is that there's a kind of a silent, I can't say majority, but a great many Berkeley professors, very concerned, enlightened, thinking White people, who agree completely with the things I have said. Now they're not going to write an op-ed ... No White person wants to seem like they're a racist.

BI: You have written about UC President Richard Atkinson's proposal to scrap the SAT, and it sounds like you don't believe him when he says it's hot about race.

JM: Of course not. It's about race, and I accept his concern and his pity. It's clear why he can't admit it. Richard Atkinson is very understandably operating under the impression that a White man of his generation would -- that it's simply impossible for Black and Latino kids to do well on an abstract standardized test, because society keeps them from doing well. But he's not thinking about the fact that there are a great many Black and Latino students who are not poor. As far as I'm concerned, any Black education solution that doesn't set standards as high for us as for everyone else is an insult.

BI: When did you leave African American Studies and what prompted that?

JM: I left African American Studies in the spring of 1998 for the simple reason that it was a department that was very unfriendly to me. Ebonics was not a big deal to them. Ebonics was more of interest in linguistics departments than it was to the African American Studies Department. It wasn't that. But I guess I didn't walk the walk or talk the talk enough for them. I wasn't Black enough for them. I was faintly disliked, and I found it extremely uncomfortable. I think that the apartment does not Challenge its students and that it was aden of mediocrity with the exception of two or three people.

BI: I couldn't help but wonder, reading the book, about (African American Studies professor) June Jordan. She comes up often, in very negative terms. Were there personal conflicts?

JM: I don't bear any animus toward her. I don't like her ideology. The reason that I quoted her by name, whereas many people I just said a professor or person, was that we did an ebonics debate in early 1997, where she basically verbally jumped me and made fun of me in a forum in which I couldn't defend myself. We were supposed to be colleagues in the same department, and she strayed from what academics are supposed to do and just did a backyard, ghetto catfight sort of thing. After what she did to me that day, why should I keep her name out of it? I needed a few names. I needed it to be clear that I was talking about real people. I could not have written this book if I was still in the African American Studies Department, but when I left the African American Studies Department, I had no idea I was going to write this book.