On the Ted Radio Hour, linguist Anne Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.

I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me but it can't be

singular and I will say but it is.

The history behind words causing a lot of debate that's on the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

In 1997, a 13-year-old black boy named Leonard Clark

was beaten into a coma after riding his bike into the

predominantly white Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport. Police deemed it a hate crime and

at the time it was part of a long history of racial strife in the area.

And one of the perpetrators was the son of a powerful Chicago Union Boss with ties to the mafia.

The story is the subject of the investigative podcast You Didn't See Nothing, which earlier this month won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for audio.

It was

forever impacted not only by the attack on Leonard,

but the series of events that happened afterward.

The story made national news.

13-year-old Leonard Clark cannot speak, does not react to his mother, and is in serious danger

of dying.

In the vicious act that has gone to the heart of Chicago's deep racial of

the Chicago's deep racial divide.

This kind of savage senseless assault strikes at the very heart of America's ideals.

Then... of America's ideals.

Then, almost overnight, the news stories turn to racial reconciliation and forgiveness.

...