“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” If George Orwell had seen ahead to today’s scramble to make black—but not white—a proper noun when referring to racial groups, he might have cited capitalization, too, as a corruptor of thought. Jennifer Harvey, evangelist for the anti-racist gospel of Ibram X Kendi, never capitalizes white but always capitalizes Black. She explains why in the introduction to Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America (2020), her child-raising manual for white parents:

This may seem to be either an unfair, or at least a grammatically inappropriate nonparallel use of racial terms.

A Few Notes

Maureen Mullarkey

August 15, 2013

Among Euan Uglow’s studio props was a female skull, minus the jaw bone and, possibly, two thousand years old. His friend and fellow painter Tony Eyton wrote that Uglow found it in an ancient burial ground and smuggled it out. It is a fit companion to Notes of an Anatomist by Frank Gonzalez-Crussi, a practicing pathologist and Professor Emeritus of Pathology at Northwestern Medical School. He is also a witty, graceful scholar and essayist. Notes opens with an urbane chapter on embalming with anecdotal references from ancient Egypt to Jacques Maritain in a dentist’s chair. Continue Reading

Euan Uglow’s Stern Beauty

Maureen Mullarkey

July 5, 2013

The only Christian work is good work, well done. –Dorothy Sayers Ask: “Who is the greatest figure painter of the late twentieth century?” The answer on this side of the Atlantic is likely to be Lucian Freud. Across the water, the choice is hardly so clear cut. Euan Uglow (1932-2000) is one of Britain’s most distinguished—to many, the most distinguished—painter of his time. Ten years younger than Freud, he died too soon. Uglow was an austere, luminous practitioner of direct observation. Continue Reading

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Mixed Race

A Few Notes

Euan Uglow’s Stern Beauty

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