John H. McWhorter (1965- ) is an African American associate professor of linguistics at University of California, Berkeley, and the author of several books on language and race relations. Some consider him a black conservative in the vein of Booker T. Washington.
McWhorter attended Friends Select School (a Quaker high school in Philadelphia) and was accepted to Simon's Rock College after tenth grade. Later, he attended Rutgers University and achieved a B.A. degree in the French. He received a master's degree in American studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University.
He specializes in creole languages and spent a good deal of time in Suriname studying the Saramaccan and Sranan languages for a planned grammar. McWhorter does not support reparations for slavery, because he believes that African Americans are too distant from their African heritage to derive any real benefit from them. A strong critic of contemporary civil rights leaders, he has called Al Sharpton "quite simply an inveterate liar," and claimed that "Jesse Jackson has no effect on the lives of most Black people."
McWhorter is currently affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
Select bibliography
- The power of Babel: a natural history of language (2002)
- Authentically black: essays for the black silent majority (2003)
- Doing our own thing: the degradation of language and music and why we should, like, care (2003)
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