BUZZ
Pondered ‘oppressive linguistic systems that continue to discipline, police, and attempt to annihilate Black language speakers’
Manchester Metropolitan University hosted the seminar “Resisting anti-Black linguistic racism and building futures of linguistic justice in schools” last week, which featured a pair of scholars who previously argued standard English “is rooted in racism.”
The first session by the University of Michigan’s April Baker-Bell examined “linguistic justice” as a “liberatory possibility.”
The professor of “language, culture, and justice in education” — who according to her faculty page researches “the intersections of Black Language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist /pro-Black language pedagogies” — discussed the “oppressive linguistic systems that continue to discipline, police, and attempt to annihilate Black language speakers.”
Building on the historical traditions of Black Freedom Schools in the United States and Black supplementary school traditions in the United Kingdom, I will share how the Linguistic Justice Freedom School functioned as an act of what Kimberlé Crenshaw calls “backtalk,” challenging oppressive linguistic structures while creating space for educators to imagine worlds beyond the here and now, beyond anti-Black linguistic racism, and toward more liberatory possibilities for language, learning, and Black life.
Baker-Bell’s (pictured) current research deals with “antiracist medical curriculum interventions with healthcare professionals,” according to her seminar bio.
The second talk, “Designing for Justice: Cultivating a Black Ethos through Justice-Oriented Solidarity as Educational Transformation Toward Black Futures” by Boston University’s Davena Jackson, looked at combining a “justice-oriented solidarity framework” with “social design experiments” to help understand “how antiblackness, white supremacy, and social realities shape pedagogy and practice, aiming to redesign curriculum and teaching strategies toward antiracist, humanizing, and transformative approaches.”
According to her faculty page, “through research-practice partnerships” Jackson “centers Blackness while challenging and disrupting anti-Blackness and white supremacy in secondary English classrooms.”
Six years ago, Baker-Bell and Jackson were among a half-dozen academics (dubbed the “Why We Cain’t Breathe!” committee) who demanded the abolition of “White Mainstream English.”
In a 3,000-word exclamation point-peppered treatise, the sextet emphasized five ultimatums including “that teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm,” “black linguistic consciousness,” and that “black dispositions [be] centered in the research and teaching of black language.”
The statement concludes with a “coda,” saying “If reading this made you feel some kinda way, instead of coming for these demands, let us help you redirect that energy.
“If you thought these demands were simply about teaching within traditional white norms or fixing Black students and their language practices, you got it wrong! This is a DEMAND for you to do much better in your own self-work that must challenge the multiple institutional structures of anti-Black racism you have used to shape language politics.”
MORE: NIU hosts seminar on ending ‘White Linguistic Hegemony’
