Language Justice For Who?
I can’t quite recall the first time I became aware that my English was viewed as incorrect or not proper. It may have been in middle school (I went to a predominantly white school district) when I would say ‘ask’ - pronounced ax-ed- and the other kids would respond with “don’t you mean A-SK?!”. Or perhaps it was in high school and I would say ‘ain’t’ in a speech and the teacher would correct me, “ Ebony, you mean ‘ am not’, ain’t is not a word.” Either way I knew fairly early on that the way I spoke at home, or at family gatherings was an unacceptable way to speak at school. Which eventually led to my fluent skills in code switching but this blog is not about my experience in code switching or an analysis of what that has done to me throughout my life. Instead it is about the invalidation of Black speak, commonly known as Ebonics or African American Vernacular English (AAVE), even in language justice movements.
I have a very distinct memory of a white man saying to me, “I can understand just about every race when they speak even with accents(mainly referring to latine peoples), but the one group of people I can never understand when they talk is Black people. I hear the words but they just don’t make any sense to me.” I was about 13 when this occurred, and lacking the skills to respond astutely I just nodded my head in confusion and went about my day. Now, at my big age of 32, I have found myself right back at this notion – but this time I am even more disturbed because even in the fight for language justice Black speak is not valid.
In September of 2023 I had the privilege to attend the 7th annual Culturally Relevant Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) conference, being a lover of words and language I was particularly excited to sit in on the sessions related to language justice and its application in assessments. This particular session spoke specifically about the concept of translanguaging, which is “when a multilingual person’s full linguistic repertoire is used and honored, instead of trying to keep narrowly focused on a single language (Moore, 2020).” The facilitators spoke specifically to the Spanish speaking population in a given school district and were making actionable efforts in translanguaging by ensuring that testing was accessible in Spanish as well as ensuring that teachers were measuring understanding of content no matter what language the student spoke. The improvements in educational services that they were seeing were significant and it was amazing to see them achieving systems level change in their work for emergent bilinguals. However, I noticed that they also had a large Black student population and was curious as to how their language was also being integrated into these efforts. As I had suspected, they weren’t.
You see what I realized in that moment was that in order for Black speak to be integrated into the language justice movement, it would first have to be recognized formally as a language. In turn, for it to be recognized as its own language the Black experience would need to be dignified and the violent history of white people, colonizers, must be reckoned with.
“The brutal truth is that the bulk of white people in America never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes. It is not the black child's language that is in question, it is not his language that is despised: It is his experience.” (Baldwin, 1979)
However, linguists classify Black speak as a dialect of the English language and thus it is not treated with the same level of care and recognition as formally declared languages. Linguistics falls short of giving Black speak the level of recognition it deserves with its own full sentence and grammatical structure. It also possess the same level of complexity as other tonal languages, like Mandarin, where the pitch of the speakers delivery alters the meaning being communicated. It is poignant that over a decade later this white man's words hit just a little differently, he was right he could not possibly ever understand Black people when they speak because like any foreign language he would have to study Black English and practice it over and over until he became fluent in it’s unique vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and tones.
“A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal--although the "common" language of all these areas is French. But each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this "common" language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: They each have very different realities to articulate, or control.” (Baldwin, 1979)
JB (Baldwin), reminds me that in Spain there are four official languages spoken that, to the untrained listener, you may not be able to readily distinguish. There is, of course, Spanish or Castilian Spanish which you will hear spoken by the vast majority of Spaniards. However, in the autonomous regions of the country you will also come across Gallego (native to Galicia), Catalan (native to Catalonia), and Basque (native to the Basque and parts of Navarre region). Each of these has their own unique set of words, grammar and sentence structure that to the average ear could easily amount to nothing more than a difference in dialect. I bring this forth to illustrate that this is not an issue of possibility nor does it require us to radically imagine, it is only an issue of dignity and power.
“A people at the center of the Western world, and in the midst of such a hostile population, has not endured and transcended by means of what is patronizingly called a "dialect." We, the blacks, are in trouble, certainly, but we are not doomed, and we are not inarticulate because we are not compelled to defend a morality that we know to be a lie.” (Baldwin, 1979)
However, I don’t expect academia to ever give it the proper validation and nor do I think we should wait on it. Waiting on an institution steeped in whiteness means we will be waiting for an eternity. An eternity we do not have to wait. Instead I am imploring us to confront the anti-Blackness of the language justice movement by seeking to provide Black speakers, who arguably are also emergent bilinguals, the same level of respect, acknowledgement and dignity in the use of their language. So, this is a call to the language justice movement, where even BASL (Black American Sign-Language) too, only receives dialectal recognition.
The dignification of Black people’s language need not be a difficult task, the inclusion of AAVE passages in school assessments allowing Black students to test for comprehension skills could be a step in the right direction. Another method that more people, in the research and evaluation field specifically, can employ is UBUNTU’s notion of ‘writing for the people’. This is how UBUNTU conceptualizes all of our reporting strategies. We see our production of documents through evaluation services as an opportunity to practice language justice in a way that serves the needs of the client, provides context and utility for all stakeholders, and disrupts the marginalization of youth, English Language Learners, and general community members from viewing and interpreting evaluation work. Language justice has made significant strides in these areas for many non-English speakers, this I am not debating, I only call us to go one layer deeper and ensure that our movements are truly moving towards liberation.
“It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power.”
References:
Baldwin, J. (1979, July 29). If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-english.html?source=post_page---------------------------
Moore, J. (2020, February 20). What is translanguaging?. What is Translanguaging? https://blog.heinemann.com/what-is-translanguaging#:~:text=Translanguaging%20is%20when%20a%20multilingual,focused%20on%20a%20single%20language