Life imitates art.........................
Posted on 06/28/2021 8:31:36 AM PDT by Red Badger
Do you speak the grammatically-correct language of white supremacy, or are you better than that?
At Maryland’s Towson University recently, a virtual conference ripped the racism of “rightful” words.
June 17th’s Antiracist Pedagogy Symposium sought to shed light on selecting syllables.
Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education April Baker-Bell — of Michigan State University — insisted teachers’ enforcement of standard English rules is an assault on “black language.”
Furthermore, per Campus Reform, she indicated black Americans bear a burden of racist violence.
White language guidelines, from the sound of things, aren’t too dissimilar:
“[It’s apparent that] anti-blackness that is used to diminish black language of black students in classrooms is not separate from the rampant and deliberate anti-black racism and violence inflicted upon black people in society.”
Black people don’t use conventionally “good” grammar, April evidently asserts, and teachers act as if they’re inferior:
“Teacher attitudes include assumptions that black students are somehow linguistically, morally, and intellectually inferior because they communicate in black language.”
Where whiteness is concerned, April’s contention isn’t uncommon.
Folks are fighting Caucasians’ cultural clench:
White Woman Who Lectures on Racism Says All White People Should Shut Up
LSU Event Explores the ‘Religion of White Rage,’ Says ‘Conservatism’ May Be a ‘Euphemism for White Supremacy’
America’s Largest Defense Contractor Fixes Its White Male Executives With Anti-White Privilege Training
Southern School District Tells Teachers to Ignore White Parents’ Complaints Over Critical Race Theory – They’re Benefiting From Whiteness
Department of Education Fights the White Supremacy of Math
Head of the Teachers Union: Going Back to School is ‘White Supremacy,’ Concern Over Suicide is ‘White Privilege’
At Towson, Indiana University of Pennsylvania English Professor Cristina Sanchez-Martin also talked of pummeling paleness:
“The repeated references to ‘correct grammar’ and ‘standard language’ reinforce master narratives of English only as white and monolingualism and a deficit view of multilingualism.”
Back to April Baker-Bell, she wrote the book on the subject — literally.
See Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy.
Earlier this month, she summarized the situation to USA Today:
“[B]lack language is a legitimate language with syntax, grammatical features, phonology and semantics. But when black people speak AAVE (African American Vernacular English), it’s seen as unprofessional, and they can be perceived as ‘intellectually inferior’ for speaking it.”
And black people are told by whites to be bilingual:
“It’s anti-black linguistic racism. It’s truly anti-blackness passing through our language in the ways we’re told we have to code switch.”
But that isn’t all. As USA Today relays, white people not only enact racism on black people with English dictates, they co-opt black people’s language. Particularly on TikTok:
What’s even more problematic is “white people coming up off of our language,” Baker-Bell says, like TikTokers rising to influencer status for videos that appropriate [black phrases] and companies using Black language in their marketing.
So when and how might white people be allowed to use the mode of communication created by black people?
To hear April tell it, we aren’t ready for that:
“When we see black people not being killed, black people not being discriminated against, black kids being able to learn and thrive with their own language, we can have that conversation.”
It’s a sad state of affairs:
“The divorcing of black people from the way that we talk is really just another way of liking what black people do, but not liking black people.”
Towson’s symposium was an effort toward computing our fluke.
And April’s on a quest for justice:
Discover the history of Black language and how it relates to the need for Black Linguistic Justice in classrooms and communities with Dr. April Baker-Bell. This virtual event takes place on Saturday, April 10! 👉 https://t.co/pDQuEDeo5q pic.twitter.com/T8LnNkdzWq
— UCF College of Arts & Humanities (@ucfcah) April 9, 2021
Will doing away with conventional grammar further sock it to whiteness and its colonialist clutches? And to what new rules should language adhere?
Whatever the answers, one thing seems clear: Revolution is immensely upon us.
-ALEX
The Ebonics controversy again.
Or maybe, just maybe, it is required for effective communication.
Why was the Ebonics Beauty Contest canceled? Because nobody wanted to be Miss Idaho.
Now imagine that they also had a teacher who believed that "2+2=4" is a sign of white-supremacy! Would not that be a real shame as well?
So who are the victims of these teachers? How is it helping that they are allowed to teach in such manner as to diminish their student's potential?
Life imitates art.........................
If I have a political party whose power stems from ignorant disaffected, poor people, you better believe I will make damn sure I never run out of ignorant disaffected, poor people.................................
If you can’t make yourself understood and if you can’t convey what you mean...why bother getting an ‘education ??
Where I worked with grad students, some of them were actually incapable of speaking properly.
One in particular, I asked several time to repeat what he said.... and STILL I could not understand what he said.
Finally, I told him: ‘If you are spending 4 years doing all this work and spending so much money for an ‘education’... then why do you want to sound like a person who is uneducated?’
What was his reply?
April Baker-Bell is straining on a gnat...
Samuel L Jackson and you went to the same school?
;>
College Symposium Razes the Anti-Black Racism of 'Good' Grammar
Definition of raze: demolish; tear down to the ground; destroys.
I see no where in the article that Anti-Back Racism of " good grammar", was destroyed. It was pushed hard that blacks should not have to engage in good grammar, because that is racism. Razes should be raised in my opinion, for what it's worth. 8>p
https://youtu.be/fmO-ziHU_D8?t=54
such skills (uh . . . uh . . .uh)
No skin off my back if you can’t land a decent job because in the interview you speak like a street rat.
Seriously, if you can’t speak your native language fluently I kinda question everything else about you.
For many blacks, avoiding proper grammar seems to be an act of insolence and defiance, of “sticking it to the man.” I’ve noticed that recent black immigrants don’t usually have that attitude, and often speak excellent English.
That IS their ‘native language’!......................
I think it was a ‘pun’....................
If English is the language of White Supremacy why do so many African nations use for their “Official” languages English, French and Portuguese?
https://www.tripsavvy.com/indigenous-african-languages-1454069
So I should shuffle foot around and speak like Stepin Fetchit. Yassuh boss.
Just please drop dead. I’m a well educated white man who speaks the American standard and have no interest in sounding like a runaway slave.
Did we consider hillbillies and rednecks before merging onto Offended Avenue?
I’ve never had a need for people to identify a subjunctive mood, but clear communication is vital to understanding.
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