English grammar question here. First of all, I have no political stance on this excerpted piece. The sentence is ‘The Sesame character Rosita gave high fives to a white child and woman.’
‘a white child and woman’ is supposed to be two persons. Shouldn’t there be ‘a’ in front of woman then? For instance, if a person has two jobs, he/she is a teacher and private tutor, not a teacher and a private tutor. ‘a white child and woman’ sounds like a woman who is a white child due to the omitted ‘a’ in front of woman, which doesn’t make sense.
Enlighten me, please. Thank you so much.
I think they were trying to say "a white child and a white woman".
To be more precise they probably should have written
a child and a woman who were white,
but that seems a bit clumsy, and being so exact might not have been absolutely necessary in the given context.
CJ
I would use the article to make it clearer, but "a noun and (a) noun" is always ambiguous. Adding the article does not make the meaning sure. Take the common expressions "a gentleman and a scholar" and "an officer and a gentleman". And if you say she is a wife and a mother, it's the same as a wife and mother. I think the difference lies mainly in the number of the thing so described. If Rosita had given a high five to a white child and woman, that would have been confusing, but since she gave high fives, it sounds like there was more than one.