I'm at a loss to see how one could rationally arrive at that conclusion. It's self-evident from the article that McWhorter meant the phrase in the same sense as

I'm at a loss to see how one could rationally arrive at that conclusion. It's self-evident from the article that McWhorter meant the phrase in the same sense as it's commonly understood. Anything else would be pointless, since he's discussing contemporary usage of the phrase. One should generally try to figure out what the author's intended meaning was, rather than twist the meaning into something that's easy to argue against but the author would never approve of.