Of John Mcwhorter's Essay 'Is A Bad Word'
The general argument made by John McWhorter in “Why ‘Redskins’ Is a Bad Word” is that not every thing you say about race is offensive but you should be careful. He states, “It may not be mean to tell someone their skin happens to be reddish. But it’s mean to call someone a Redskin (6)” This shows that he doesn’t believe that every thing referred to the color of your skin is “racist” but a slur is. McWhorter also believes that there are better alternatives from words like Redskin. He shows us “ ‘crippled’ had a less neutral connotation after a while, upon ‘handicap’ was a fine substitute (6)” This shows us that he thinks that there can be healthier substitutes than Redskins. I think Mr. McWhorter’s thought process isn’t logical at times and