Posted on 08/06/2013 12:04:45 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last week, Don West, defense attorney in the George Zimmerman murder trial, asked friend of Trayvon Martin and case witness Rachel Jeantel a strange question. “Are you claiming in any way that you don’t understand English?” he inquired, though she had been answering his questions in fluent English throughout much of the previous day. Jeantel, who was born and raised in Miami, insisted that she did, but West wasn’t convinced. He asked her once more whether perhaps, because her first language was Creole (transmitted to her by her Haitian mother), she had any trouble understanding English.
West was not alone. In the days that followed Jeantel’s testimony, the internet was ablaze with comments about her “poor English,” some of them willfully mean-spirited and others prescribing well-intentioned solutions to the perceived problem of widespread ungrammatical English. Well-intentioned or not, ungrammaticality is not a problem that Jeantel had. We need to look elsewhere to understand the strange phenomenon of being accused of not speaking your own language.
Some have rightly denounced the racism implicit in Jeantel’s questioning, admittedly unknown to West, who may well have been confused about her linguistic background. But even well-meaning commentators aiming to vindicate Jeantel have not quite gotten it right. Salon’s Brittney Cooper wrote that Jeantel speaks her own “idiosyncratic” idiom that combines “the three languages – Hatian Kreyol (or Creole), Spanish, and English — that she speaks.” Well, not exactly. Virtually anyone who was born and raised in the United States can speak perfect English without interference from any other language, no matter where their parents came from. The suggestion that Jeantel’s language is peppered with influence from Haitian Creole and Spanish implies that there is something off about her English. There’s nothing wrong with speaking imperfect English, but that doesn’t describe Rachel Jeantel, and to suggest otherwise misses — you might argue even reinforces — the real injustice at the heart of her cross-examination.
That there is nothing incorrect about the way Jeantel speaks is not so much an opinion as an undisputed fact that any authority on language could readily point out. I breathed a sigh of relief last weekend when linguist John McWhorter explained that Jeantel’s “English is perfect. It’s just that it’s Black English.” What McWhorter calls “Black English” is a dialect spoken by millions of Americans, and decades of linguistics research, much of it compiled by McWhorter himself, attests that it is a robust dialect like any other, with an internally consistent grammar and vocabulary. Many of those millions of speakers speak exclusively African American English in their communities, only to be taught from their earliest interactions with American public institutions, as schoolchildren, that their dialect is ungrammatical.
Jeantel’s English is not any more or less grammatical than the Standard American variety spoken by Zimmerman’s attorney, but unlike the defense attorney, she did not have the advantage of speaking the dialect that is sanctioned by America’s dominant social stratum. Linguists like John McWhorter fervidly oppose linguistic prescription — the practice of prescribing rules governing language use that do not reflect the way that people speak in practice — which they hold to baselessly and arbitrarily privilege certain varieties of speech over others. Linguistic prescription may be baseless, but it is not arbitrary at all: Prescriptivism systematically and invariably privileges the language of the already powerful.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Trayvon Martin case, which thrust the persistence of racism in America uncomfortably into the spotlight, has continued to clumsily illustrate the structural disadvantages encountered by millions of black Americans. African Americans are victim not just to gross racial profiling, as was Trayvon Martin, but also to linguistic discrimination, a little-understood prejudice that springs directly from linguistic prescription. Some forms of prescription, like rules against split infinitives and ending sentences in prepositions, illogically impose grammatical rules that do not naturally occur in language, but are, on some level, harmless. Others, like our culture’s categorical repudiation of African American English, have social ramifications easily as severe as racial profiling. It can be awfully difficult to excel in school, to succeed in the professional world, or to deliver credible testimony in court when virtually every institution in your society operates with the assumption that your language is fundamentally incorrect and takes it as an indicator of your intelligence.
Many have already pointed out that Rachel Jeantel was wrongly cast as unreliable and combative last week because of her race, gender, and size. We need to add language to that list. It is not because of her flawed English, as some have suggested, but in spite of her perfectly articulated English that Jeantel was discriminated against. Linguistic discrimination is just one of many mechanisms that systemically disadvantage African Americans in the U.S., but it is a crucial one. There are few things so disempowering as being silenced for the language that you speak.
Her language skills and her (lack of) reading skills cause me to wonder how she managed to get past the third grade. She is the prime example of what’s wrong with our schools. She should have been flunked repeatedly until she mastered the requirements of each grade. But instead, she was passed on each school year in hopes that the next teacher in line might have better luck.
I refuse to believe that she couldn’t do a LOT better if she applied herself. But she never had to do so because the reward of graduation was given regardless of achievement.
By refusing to learn actual English they opt out of the world of work and prosperity in exchange for Official Victimhood and parasitic living.
My aunts, uncles and mother all graduated from Miami Edison High School and went on to lead productive lives. One uncle founded, ran and owned a large chain of banks in Florida for many years and was friends with President Nixon and other worthies and an aunt was the school nurse at Rutgers University for decades. They were poorer than Rachel Jeantel could ever imagine back then.
That lifestyle will soon be a thing of the past. I don’t know when it will become unsustainable, just that it will. There was a day in Rome when bread and circuses were no longer doled out and that day will arrive here, as well, sooner or later. Now we have EBT cards, Obamaphones and reality television, but it’s basically the same thing.
We all come from the same cloth....Can’t change......I still liked those cotton Khakis starched....with a starched field jacket trussed up correctly. Spit shined jump boots just so...
Shudder more when you ponder that Jenteal is pretty much the level we need to be dumbed down to in the name of equality.
I believe Huxley called them Deltas and Epsilons. I also believe that we are living a bastardized cross between 1984 and Brave New World. Realirt outside my window seems to verify it more with each passing day.
This is bullcrap.
Rachel’s communication problem wasn’t because she was speaking “black English”.
Rachel wasn’t understandable because she refused to speak loudly enough, and she mumbled.
Yes, sir.
Oh, Mrs. Cleaver...
He can call it Shinola but it it’s still just...
“Black” English = Uneducated.
You left out the barf alert.
P.S. Does Rosetta Stone offer a course in "Black English"?
They won’t wait for the dumbing down.
Watch for the pro-active appearance of Diana Moon Glampers.
I do not question that the young lady speaks a dialect of English. However, the fact that she does not speak standard American English will limit her and any other person speaking a dialect of English when it comes to getting a job.
People can speak any way they want at home and among their friends but should be aware of the impact a dialect different from standard American English will have on their careers.
Academic studies not withstanding, schools need to communicate these impacts to students. Speaking a dialect of English will not get you in the university or medical school.
Who wants a job when you have TANF, EBT, Section 8, SSI, gubmint cheese, Obamaphone and dozens more things?
It’s implied if your IQ is higher than Miss Rachel.
South African Trevor Noah does part of his “Born a Crime” stand up sketch on Leno. Worth the commercial and the watch, funny as all get out.
About halfway through, “Their command of the English language has no equal,” talking about American Blacks’ use of English, which is why I’m posting this here.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/316914
Where be my free helfcare at?
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