CHAPTER 10

"I Can Switch My Language, But I Can't Switch My Skin" What Teachers Must Understand About Linguistic Racism

April Baker-Bell

Danny:

Baker-Bell:

I get that people from different cultures and backgrounds communi­cate differently with each other, but I also understand that my stu­dents will enter a land where they will be judged based on their language. Whether this is fair or not, as their teacher, isn't it my job to prepare my Black students to communicate in "standard English" so that they don't get discriminated against?

They are also living in a land where they are discriminated against based on the color of their skin, so how do you prepare them to avoid being discriminated against for being Black?

CHAPTER 10 • "I CAN SWITCH MY LANGUAGE, BUT I CAN'T SWITCH MY SKIN" 97

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T his e:xtiiange took place in an English education course that I teach each semester that challenges students' dominant notions of language and

engages them in critical conversations about the language practices of linguisti­cally marginalized youth of color. During one of our earlier class discussions, Danny,1 a White, monolingual in-service teacher, was wrestling with how to honor his Black students' language practices while preparing them for what he perceived to be their linguistic reality. Danny, like many well-intentioned teach­ers, assumed that if Black students communicate in White Mainstream English, 2

then they will somehow avoid discrimination. Unfortunately, many teachers are unaware of the role that race plays in shaping their ideologies about language (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016).

In my response to Danny's question, I could hear the voices of so many Black students from my previous research and teaching experiences who reminded me that communicating in White Mainstream English does not always prevent linguistic racism. 3 I could hear the voice of Janel, a ninth-grade student from Detroit, telling me about her experiences being racialized regardless of whether she communicated in White Mainstream English or Black or African American Language (BL or AAL). My response also reflected the frustration that 15-year-old Lorenzo displayed during an interview as he tried to untangle his linguistic iden­tity from his racial identity. I could hear Calvin, a student from one of my ear­lier studies, argue, "If African American Language was used by the dominant population and Dominant American English [see footnote 2] was used by the minority population, then African American Language would be deemed the superior language and Dominant American English would be viewed as inferior" (Baker-Bell, 2013, p. 365).

My question to Danny, along with the student voices that underpin it, illustrate how nearly impossible it is to separate a speaker's language from their racial posi­tioning in society (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In this chapter, I provide a brief overview of how linguistic racism gets operationalized in our pedagogical practices, and I offer recommendations and a reflective activity that help teachers work against perpetuating linguistic racism in their classrooms.

1 All names included in this chapter, outside of the author's, are pseudonyms. 2 I use the terms White Mainstream English and Black Language in this piece to foreground the racial dimensions of language. White Mainstream English is commonly referred to as standard English or Dominant American English (DAE). Other aliases for Black Language include African American Language (AAL), African American English (AAE), African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and Ebonies. 3 I use the term linguistic racism here to describe the role that racism plays in language.

PART 2 • UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVES

STATING THE LINGUISTIC FACTS: THE LINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS BEHIND RACE

Although Black Language is viewed as a symbol of linguistic and intellectual inferior­ity and is devalued in many classrooms, like "every naturally used language, it is sys­tematic with regular rules and restrictions at the lexical, phonological and grammatical level" (Rickford, 2002, p. 1). Black Language is at least one of the languages spoken by most Black or African Americans (Paris, 2016). It is not merely "a set of deviations from the 'standard"' (Alim & Smitherman, 2012) or an informallanguage4 that can be classified as solely slang or street talk. Like the slang in every language, Black slang represents the new and short -lived vocabulary of Black language (That party was lit) whereas a language refers to words (ashy), distinctive patterns of pronunciation (aks for ask), and grammar (see Table 10.1) that are more systematic, deeply rooted, and stable over time (Green, 2004; Rickford, 1997). Black Language is also unique for its rich rhetorical style. Features such as signifyin', semantic inversion, and call &

response are a few examples of the Black cultural modes of discourse (see Table 10.2) that have survived for generations in the Black community (Williams, 2013).

TABLE 10.1

GRAMMATICAL FEATURES

Habitual Be: to indicate an action occurs habitually.

He be in the house studying.

Regularized Agreement:

She told me they was going to be at the library after school.

Bin (Been): stressed been indicates an action happened in the remote past.

We been finished with our homework.

Although White Mainstream English is the standard used in many classrooms to measure Black students (Alim & Smitherman, 2012), linguists maintain that the idea of a standardized language is hypothetical and socially constructed (Lippi-Green, 2012). White Mainstream English is most widely accepted as being proper and cor­rect (Lippi-Green, 2012), but if you ask anyone to define or describe it, many would define it using arbitrary ideas that reflect language superiority (Haddix, 2015). The belief that there exists a homogenous, standard, one-size-fits-all language is a myth that is used to justify discrimination on the basis of "language markers that signal alliance to certain social groups, primarily those having to do with race, ethnicity, [gender] and economic factors" (Lippi-Green, 2015, p. 15).

4 There are formal and informal registers-a formal and informal way of using the language.

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TABLE 10.2

BLACK CULTURAL MODES OF DISCOURSE

Signifyin': a mode of discourse that has a double meaning and can be used to provide playful commentary or a serious social critique (Smitherman, 2006).

Example

Daughter: I need $50 for the homecoming dance, Momma.

Mother: You must think money grow on trees. (money is limited)

Semantic inversion: when a word takes on a reverse or opposite meaning.

Example

Sandra: I have not seen you in a long time. Where you been hiding?

Barbara: I've been working and going to school. I'll be graduating in the spring.

Sandra: Well, go on' with your bad self! (bad means good).

Call & response: "a mode of communication in which the audience constantly participates by responding to the speaker, and in most cases, the audience members act as co-producers of the text or discourse" (Will iams, 2013, p. 414).

Example

Pastor: Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes early in the morning. Can I get a witness?

Congregation: Amen! Hallelujah!

Sociolinguists have long argued that so-called "standard English" reflects and legitimizes White, male, upper middle-class, mainstream ways of speak­ing English (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Lippi-Green, 2012). As argued by Smitherman (2006), the only reason White Mainstream English is the "form of English that gets to be considered 'standard' [is] because it derives from the style of speaking and the language habits of the dominant race, class, and gender in U.S. society" (p. 6). The concept of Whiteness is important in understand­ing the silent and invisible ways in which White Mainstream English serves as the unstated norm in our classrooms (Pimentel, 2011). Alim and Smitherman ( 2012) assert:

Whites can exercise power through overt (obvious) and covert (hidden) racist practices. The fact that it is the language and communicative norms of those in power, in any society, that tend to be labeled as "standard" "official;' "normal;' "appropriate;' "respectful;' and so on, often goes unrecognized, particularly by the members of the dominating group. In our case, White Mainstream English and White ways of speaking become the invisible-or better, inaudible-norms of what educators and uncritical scholars like to call academic English, the language of school, the language of power, or communicating in academic settings. (p. 171)

PART 2 • UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVES

In this way, White Mainstream English-speaking students get erroneously positioned as academically prepared to achieve because their cultural ways of being (language, literacies, histories, values, know ledges) are privileged in classrooms. From this assumption, Black Language-speaking students and other linguistically marginalized students of color get falsely positioned as linguistically inadequate because their language practices are viewed as defi­cient. Some Black students have noted that when they use White Mainstream English in classrooms, they are often met with symbolic linguistic violence (Johnson, Jackson, Stovall, & Baszile, 2017; Martinez, 2017) and linguistic microaggressions- bias and negative messages such as "you are really articu­late;' "you speak very well;' "you speak intelligently"-that imply that they should sound a certain way based on their race (Charity Hudley & Mallinson, 2014). These same messages are rarely directed at White students who commu­nicate in White Mainstream English. This illustrates how Black students are not only racialized because of the color of their skin, but they are also racialized because of their language.

HOW LINGUISTIC RACISM GETS PERPETUATED IN OUR PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES

Linguistic racism gets normalized in classrooms every day through disciplinary discourses, curricular choices, and pedagogical practices. Here I use a com­monly known approach in academic discourse, code-switching pedagogies, to illustrate how linguistic racism subtly gets propagated through our pedagogical practices.

In their book, Code-Switching Lessons: Grammar Strategies for Linguistically Diverse Writers, Wheeler and Swords (2010) model for teachers how to "lay down the red pen and use successful strategies-contrastive analysis and code-switching­for teaching Standard English grammar in linguistically diverse classrooms" (p. vii). In the box that follows, I include instructions and a few of the code-switching charts that Wheeler and Swords recommend teachers use to help their Black students code-switch. More specifically, the activities displayed below are from a lesson in their book entitled "Diversity in Life and Language:' This lesson focuses on getting students to identify informal and formal places (Table 10.3) and informal and formal clothing (Table 10.4) as a pathway to understanding formal and informal English or how to use language by the formality of the situation (Table 1 0.5).

CHAPTER 10 • "I CAN SWITCH MY LANGUAGE, BUT I CAN'T SWITCH MY SKIN " 101

102

Instructions from Wheeler and Swords (2006) to teachers on creating code-switching charts: In this unit, we begin to work with the T-chart, the graphic organizer that will

underlie all our future work with students on code-switching. Just as we will in

every lesson, we place the name of the category we're exploring at the top of

the chart. Then we title the left-hand column Informal and the right-hand

column Formal. This way, we will be able to lead the class in discovery of

Informal clothing or places or language and Formal clothing or places or

language. In this unit we build three charts with the students, contrasting formal

and informal clothing, places, and language (Wheeler & Swords, 2010, p. 3).

TABLE 10.3 Informal and Formal Places

PLACES -------------------------------

INFORMAL FORMAL

your house wedding

farm church

outside museum

mall interview

TABLE 10.4 Informal and Formal Clothing

CLOTHING -------------------------------

INFORMAL FORMAL

jeans suit

T·shirt tuxedo

sneakers nice dress

basketball uniform military uniform

TABLE 10.5 Code-Switching: Informal and Formal Language Patterns (Wheeler & Swords, 2006).

HABITUAL BE ------------------------------------

INFORMAL FORMAL

Y'all be playing. You are usually playing.

You are always playing.

You are typically playing.

SOURCE: Wheeler, R. S. , & Swords, R. (2006). Code-switching: Teaching standard English in urban classrooms. Urbana, IL: NCTE. ·

PART 2 • UNDERSTANDING THE CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVES

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WHEELER AND SWORDS APPROACH

On the surface, the code-switching charts appear to be extremely helpful in getting students to think about how to use language based on the formality of a situation. However, as Young (2009) points out, "the code-switching approach implies a racist, segregationist response to the language habits of African Americans" (as cited in Baker-Bell, 2013, p. 357). First, classifying Black Language as informal and White Mainstream English as formal further legitimize a hier­archy that produces Blackness and Black Language as inferior and Whiteness and White Mainstream English as superior. Furthermore, by teaching Black chil­dren to restrict Black Language to informal contexts, teachers "ignore the many ways of producing formal speech in African American English in addition to informal uses of Standard English" (Young, Barrett, Young-Rivera, & Lovejoy, 2014, p. 45). Moreover, the code-switching charts imply that Black Language should not be used in formal places like churches and weddings, which can be problematic and confusing for Black children given that Black churches and weddings are two significant forces that nurture and preserve Black cultural traditions.

Finally, as I review the code-switching charts, I am reminded of a comment that Janel made during an interview: "it's not just about language or how you talk:' Janel is suggesting that code-switching pedagogies ignore the relationship between language and one's racial identity. That is, code-switching is a response to the technical differences between Black Language and White Mainstream English but ignores the racial and cultural tensions that underlie such pedagogies (Baker-Bell, 2013).

"SHOW ME THE RECEIPTS!": BLACK STUDENTS AND UNCRITICAL LANGUAGE PEDAGOGIES

The Black youth that I have come to know through my teaching and research expe­riences indicate that they are fed up with cover-up and uncritical language pedago­gies that do not consider their language intellectually valuable. Black youth want receipts! 5 Many are well-aware that White Mainstream English is the expected lan­guage in school because it represents White linguistic norms, not because it is a universal, proper way of using language. They have concerns about why Black stu­dents are required to code-switch and learn White Mainstream English for aca-

5 A phrase used in the Black Language community when someone is in disbelief about something (in this case, uncritical language pedagogies) and hard evidence (or receipts) is required to prove it to be true.

CHAPTER 10 • "I CAN SWITCH MY LANGUAGE, BUT I CAN 'T SWITCH MY SKIN " 103

demic success when White students are not required to learn anything about Black Language or code-switch to be academically successful. They want to know how communicating in White Mainstream English is going to prevent them from being discriminated against when Black people are being killed in the streets across America left and right just for being Black (e.g. Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride, Jordan Edwards). They question why their teachers tell them that Black Language will not lead to success when it has been instrumental in protest and justice movements (Kynard, 2013), which have led to change in the structure and character of American society. Black youth are fed up with claims that Black Language will not get them jobs when they watch their linguistic and cultural creations get appropriated and used in promotional ads, at sporting events, and in cinema! Their concerns suggest that teachers cannot continue to cover up language politics with respectability language pedagogies.

To move toward transformation, teachers must first recognize that they are com­plicit in the reproduction of linguistic and racial inequality in schools and society. Too often, teachers look for cookie-cutter pedagogical approaches and easy-fix solutions to address what they perceive as a problem with their Black students' language practices; as a result, they fail to see how their own pedagogical practices uphold White supremacy and anti-Black racism.

• • Engaging the Mind * Taking Action * Inspiring Excellence Beginning the Conversation With Students

104

In Table 10.6, I list eight questions that

get teachers to thinking about the ways

in which linguistic racism covertly and

overtly gets propagated through their

curricular choices and pedagogical

practices. Teachers must interrogate their

own practices as a first step toward

working "against, racial, cultural,

linguistic, and socioeconomic inequalities"

(CEE Executive Committee, 2009).

TABLE 10.6 Activity: Do you propagate linguistic racism in your classroom?

1. Do you teach your students that White Mainstream English is the "standard," "official," "normal," "appropriate," " respectful" way of communicating?

2. Do you teach your students that Black Language is "slang," "informal," "inappropriate," or an "uneducated" way of communicating?

PART 2 • UN DERSTANDING THE CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVES

3. Do you teach your students that Black Language should be restricted to informal situations and White Mainstream English should be used in every other situation?

4. Is White Mainstream English the gold standard used in your class by which all students are measured?

5. Do you teach students about the historical, cultural, political, racial, and linguistic dimensions of Black Language?

6. Do you teach students that Black Language is systematic with regular rules and restrictions at the lexical, phonological, and grammatical level?

7. Do you teach your students that the idea of a "standard language" is hypothetical and socially constructed?

8. Do you teach your students about the intersections between language and race when teaching about language?

If you answered "YES" to questions 1 to

4 or "NO" to questions 4 to 8, then you

probably recognize how your own

curricular choices and pedagogical

practices play a critical role in upholding and reproducing linguistic racism. To

begin creating more linguistically inclusive and humane classrooms for

Black youth, I recommend that teachers

provide their students with a critical

linguistic awareness of the historical , cultural, racial , and political

underpinnings of Black Language." I

provide an inquiry-based activity below

(see Figures 10.1 and 1 0.2) that helps

teachers begin this conversation by

inviting students to participate in a

dialogue about Black Language. The first

character on the activity sheet

questions: "What is African American Language (AAL)? Is it incorrect,

improper, or broken-English? Is it slang?"

This character represents the uniformed

perspective of AAL typically held by

the general public, including some

Black people. The second character in

the conversation was designed to

counter or interrogate dominant

assumptions about languages by providing a historical, political, or

cultural perspective of Black Language.

Finally, the worksheet includes a blank

section that invites students to

contribute their ideas, thoughts , and

perspectives to the conversation. This activity is one of many steps that

teachers can incorporate in their

quest to create more linguistically

humane classrooms where students and teachers learn to use language

and literacy in critical and empowering ways.

CHAPTER 10 • "I CAN SWITCH MY LANGUAGE, BUT I CAN'T SWITCH MY SKIN" 105

FIGURE 10.1 Activity: A Conversation About African American Language

What is African American Language (AAL)? Is it incorrect, improper, or broken­English? Is it slang?

1.

AAL can be defined as a legitimate Black-originated, rule-based language that is

spoken by most (but not all) African Americans. It is not slang, broken-English, or street talk. AAL is intimately connected with a history of oppression, resistance,

2.

and rich linguistic and literary achievement among African

Americans.

Your thoughts, questions, concerns:

FI'GURE 10.2

C>

1.

,j

Enslaved Africans arrived to the United States chained together and without the skill to communicate in the English language. They were

purposely separated from others who spoke their [native]language to prevent them from escaping or rebelling. Still, they were expected to

learn the language of the land (English) although there were laws that prohibited enslaved Afncans from receiving an education and learning how to read or write. Still, enslaved Africans created African American Language out of the remnants of their mother tongue (West Afr ican

languages) and pieces and parts of the English Language. This language not only provided a way for enslaved Afr icans to communicate with each other, but it also provided them a means of communication that could not be understood bY.

European slave masters.

0 0

0

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