English is the study and delivery of the English language in context. It is a required gateway all must pass in pursuit of higher education in the United States. The discipline is meant to standardize language and writing of students so that their work may be evaluated in relation to what is considered English as defined and maintained by those in the field. This is oftentimes where problems arise. In many of the sections in this reader, a discussion about who controls the creation and maintenance of knowledge and thus what becomes standard is being described. In this particular field, racist ideas about what standard English is have dominated the field since its inception. Many academics in the field are making the connection between language and white supremist ideals of “proper” English. Those academics seek to dismantle and re-examine current rules about what is acceptable in an effort to include a larger swath of language used in the United States (Baker-Bell, 2020).
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man by Minnesota Police Officer Derek Chauvin who placed his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck, killing him in front of witnesses and filmed by a courageous bystander for the whole world to see, an awakening took place by those who were previously unaware of the ways in which structural and individual racism plague the lives of Black, Indigenous, people of color nationwide. While many more named and unnamed individuals have also been killed by law enforcement, his death served as a rallying cry for justice. As stated throughout this document, academia is also guilty of racism and is rooted in white supremacy. Many academic disciplines felt moved to respond to this and commit to do better. English, like other areas of study, always had within it, faculty who were long time spokespeople to shift this norm and have been having conversations about how to address this. Now that racial justice is in the spotlight, many are demanding change.
A position statement by the Conference on College Composition & Communication (part of the National Council for Teachers of English, considered by many the most significant professional organization for faculty in English) identifies specific ways in which structural racism has been built into the teaching of the English language. The authors provide a list of demands that need to be considered in an attempt to facilitate Black Linguistic Justice in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement. Included in this list are: issues surrounding framing academic,“standard” English as the norm, and acknowledging that this is a social construction which is entrenched in white supremacy and which forces many Black students to code switch. Also adding more authors of color to curriculum, and insisting that academia address anti-Blackness as endemic to how language functions. Lastly, an examination is required of how English/education has been historically situated, and how college writing has been actively constructed.
It is a call to faculty in English to stop positioning White language as the standard English and to do much better in their own self-work in order to challenge the multiple institutional structures of anti-Black racism used to shape language politics (Baker-Bell, 2020). This type of engaged pedagogy that employs a variety of acceptable language including Black Vernacular English (BVE) can be liberatory for students and faculty who are so often marginalized.
An unbroken connection exists between the broken English of the displaced, enslaved African and the diverse black vernacular speech black folks use today. In both cases, the rupture of standard English enabled and enables rebellion and resistance. By transforming the oppressors' language, making a culture of resistance, black people created an intimate speech that could say far more than was permissible within the boundaries of standard English. The power of this speech is not simply that it enables resistance to white supremacy, but that it also forges a space for alternative cultural production and alternative epistemologies-different ways of thinking and knowing that were crucial to creating a counter-hegemonic worldview. (hooks, 1994 p.171).
In reality, much of our pop culture and political slogans originated from BVE. For example, “Stay Woke,” which has been changed to “Woke,” which has been in turn co-opted into a negative term by more conservative groups.
The English Department at Loyola University released a response to the killing of George Floyd and their commitment to do better. Their statement summarizes the connection of literary canons to whiteness and the English discipline’s roots in imperialism and Eurocentrism. They list 5 affirmations:
- Black lives matter.
- Racism is based in white supremacy.
- Literature and literary canons have been used to validate white supremacy.
- All spaces at the university, including our classrooms, should be inclusive and welcoming to all BIPOC students, staff, and faculty.
- Systemic inequity exists, and confronting racism requires that we actively facilitate conversations about it in the classroom (English Department's Commitment, nd).
They go on to explain how they will keep this commitment including reinstating a tenure-track faculty position in African American literature and continuing educating themselves about anti-racism and engaging as a department in discernment (English Department's Commitment, nd). The University of Chicago affirms a commitment to BLM and states they will only admit graduate students specializing in Black Studies for 2020-2021. Further, they acknowledge that, “English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness” (Faculty Statement, 2020).
Although indirectly tied to English as a discipline, the publishing industry is closely connected to creative writing programs, which typically fall under English. Those programs have proliferated immensely in the past few decades, particularly in graduate programs, but the realities of the publishing world mean creative writers of color are less likely to find equity in the process of getting published (So, 2020).
Publishing is mass marketed to white audiences more than people of color. This continues in academia, as English faculty feel obligated to only “ teach the classics,” and not highlighting important creative writers of color. This leaves English students with a false understanding of who the great English thinkers and writers are. In efforts to offset this, there are writers of color workshops, meet ups and Instagram sites like "black girls read", Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), and The Root, which highlight writers of color (Wabuke, 2015).
