THE INTELLECTUAL YET IDIOT.

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, the newest act in the side show is Notre Dame's Cyraina Johnson-Roullier.

On one side, the violent visuals of Jan. 6, 2021, insist that this horrific moment was about the denial of one of America’s most treasured ideals — the peaceful transfer of power. On the other, that it was an act of committed patriots desperately fighting to save their country. Bypassing its hard surface reveals that this terrible juncture was also about language.

More importantly, it concerns an invisible relation between language and color that distracts from the true problem — how we are ever to reconcile such profound differences. Yet despite the pain and disillusionment felt by all, if we do not together find a way to articulate a new possibility, no one will be the winner.

Sometimes a truly stupid and futile gesture is that. But you don't get to show off your culture-studies chops that way.

If we are to successfully empower ourselves to avoid another event in our political future as traumatic as Jan. 6, we must use this moment to understand that many of the roots of its central conflict can be found in language seemingly innocuous, yet color-coded.

We don’t talk about language in terms of its having a “color.” This idea remains underground, in a noiseless place of assumption and belief that substitutes itself for the authentic reality of human experience. As an African American raised on standard English, I’ve often been asked, “Why you talk white?” by others who aren’t. Efforts to understand how such mainstream speech came to be also often raise the question, “Where are you from?”

I wonder is she omitted the verb between "why" and "you" on purpose, or if I should throw an implicit bias flag right there.  On the other hand, that first sentence betrays a lack of facility with clear writing.  Stick around, there are even deeper rabbit holes to go down.

On Jan. 6, 2021, this “color” of language was everywhere, and especially in then-President Donald Trump’s speech at his “Save America” rally, where he urged supporters to “stop the steal.” This idea is what Janet McIntosh, professor of linguistic anthropology and co-editor of the book “Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies,” calls a “dog whistle,” or a seemingly innocent allusion with special meaning for others.

Here, McIntosh explains, it is racially charged as “the phrase ‘Stop the Steal’ has special resonance for … (Trump’s) followers, because for years … (he) has stoked the idea that racial minorities are ‘stealing’ from ‘decent’ (white) Americans; (and) that immigrants are pouring in to plunder the nation.”

Even more significant is the idea that this “color” of language is also part of a generalized “language” of race in America. And because this “language” is historically both word- and image-based, as professor of literature Robyn Wiegman explores in her book “American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender,” racially determined words and images are often inextricably intertwined in violent and forcible cultural meanings that are also deeply divided.

As the Pajamas Media people frequently note, if you're hearing the dog whistle, you might be the dog.  Does trotting out the full arsenal of scare quotes and untestable High Theory to turn a protest of ad hoc alterations to voting procedures into the next coming of Jim Crow persuade anyone?  We might expect such foolishness out of a serial plagiarizer who has become a senile figurehead.  But a tenured professor at what is supposedly a highly regarded university?