Is it still English if the accent is on the wrong syllable? I want to argue that it’s not. Rebel is a noun. To rebel is a verb. “The rebels opted to rebel.” is English. “The rebels opted to rebel.”… Read More ›
Month: January 2021
SENSITIVITY READERS
Heaven forfend that books should offend. So I knew that publishers have taken to hiring sensitivity readers. What I didn’t know, but should have guessed, is just how sensitive these sensitivity readers take readers to be. I could regale you… Read More ›
SOCIAL SCIENCE 100
There are five times as many inordinately tall white men as black men in America, and yet there are three times as many blacks in the NBA as whites. Why isn’t this a slam-dunk proof that there’s discrimination against white… Read More ›
ONE PARADOX OF POWER
Last Saturday Donald Trump spent an hour on the phone trying to inveigle the Attorney General of Georgia to ‘find’ him enough votes to overturn the results of the election, in the wake of which some pundits are speculating on… Read More ›
BREONNA TAYLOR AND NO-KNOCK WARRANTS
On the one hand it’s perfectly understandable that law enforcement might not want to give the miscreant the opportunity to flush the evidence before it can be found, or to arm himself so he can go down fighting. But on… Read More ›
STEREOTYPING
It’s a matter of straightforward induction that Great Danes are typically taller than Chihuahuas. So why would it be odd to say that they’re stereotypically taller? Because in normal parlance a stereotype only applies to people. Then why would it… Read More ›
THE ROLE MODEL ARGUMENT
The role model argument for affirmative action hiring cannot be dismissed out of hand. There may, however, be a few less-than-welcome autonomous consequences to consider. For one thing, affirmative action hiring is very likely to be sub-optimal by measures other… Read More ›
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
Picking cotton in leg-irons is very slow work. So instead – and with very few exceptions – slaves are held in their servitude not by leg-irons but by there being nowhere else to go, and there being no access to… Read More ›
TWO CALLS TO ARMS: GRIEVANCE ACTIVISM AND THE RESISTANCE OF THE PRIVILEGED
There’s a lot of variation within white. I happen to be swarthily white, but I’m white nonetheless. I know that all us whites are privileged, but I’m especially privileged. And yet, though I probably should, I don’t seem to suffer… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 