I’m angry about something I never used to be angry about. In fact, I didn’t even know enough to know that I should be angry. But now that I know, it feels too important to not be angry about. A great deal of this is a result of Laura Greenfield’s article “The ‘Standard English’ Fairy Tale.”
I had never really considered the idea that cracking down on grammar could be considered problematic. However, Greenfield really opened my eyes to the idea that glorifying a certain version of English in a country with no official language is a practice that benefits only the people who can afford an education. These people, unsurprisingly, are generally rich and white. After all, it was a group of rich old white scholars who wrote these grammar rules in the first place.
By championing a certain dialect of English and calling it the “correct” or “standard” version, we are saying that all of the other versions are wrong. We are saying that the ebonics of African American people is faulty. This is inherently racist.
Laura Greenfield argues that ” The evidence of the claim that ‘Standard English’ is an abstraction deliberately and deceptively used to refer to a variety of privileged white speech patterns can be observed in a number of significant phenomenon” (Greenfield 43). One example of this evidence can be found in schools all across the country. Greenfield explains that if a white student writes a paper that has grammatical errors, the teacher sees it as capable of improvement, just in need of more editing. However, if a student of color writes a paper with those same grammatical errors, the teacher automatically believes it “…to be evidence of the incompetence ascribed to a race of people and is received with far greater hostility” (Greenfield 47). This belief is racist and only further contributes to the unjust stereotypes that currently exist.
It truly seems, based on this evidence, that people of color do not possess the right to their own language. In a statement from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, they make clear the importance of students being able to use their own voices. This statement says,”We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language — the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style” (CCC).
However, it seems students of color are not often afforded this right in practice. As Greenfield’s previous example suggests, they are thrown into a system where they must adapt to the rules of “Standard English,” where they must sink or swim. To write in their own dialect means running the risk of being considered ignorant by white teachers who clutch at their pearls and Merriam Webster dictionaries the second they spot a grammatical error in their writing.
Perryman-Clark explores this idea greatly in his article called “Understanding Complexities Associated with What It Means to Have the Right to Your Own Language.” He explains, “Despite the Committee’s attempt to address these questions, the issues of students’ rights to their own language in classroom spaces across the country and beyond has remained a complicated one because the policy never answered the question of how to ‘affirm’ student language right…” (Perryman-Clark). He raises a rather good point. To create a policy that simply declares something to be true is not enough. The teachers who are grading these papers need to be trained properly so they can learn to be accepting of the different dialects their students use to write. These teachers need to be aware that some of their pedagogical stances are not just outdated, but racist. We need to make the classroom environment one where everyone can thrive.
I’m taking an Ethnic American Literature course this semester and I encountered this problem, not from the professor, but from an English major who is in studies to become a professor herself. We are reading a book called Salvage the Bones which features an African American family living in the south. Naturally, their dialect is quite different from what it is here in New Jersey. While we were discussing the novel in class, this fellow English major expressed her exasperation at the language, saying that their grammar and dialect bothered her because of the very fact that she’s an English major.
We need to start challenging that. We need to start teaching our students that holding everyone to a standard of institutional whiteness is racist. After all, they’ll be the ones grading the papers someday of other students.
So I have to ask: is there such a thing as “Standard English?” Should there be? In a country that is more a salad bowl than it is a melting pot, how can we ask everyone to assimilate to one standard?
I’m happy that this article has taught you so much about how Standard English can be perceived as racist to students of color that have a different way of speaking English. I appreciate that you have now found the anger that has been inside of me ever since I was a little girl and was told that my accent was too thick. I also very much-loved Laura Greenfield’s article about Standard English because I found it very relatable and I was very happy that someone was finally writing about something that has been bothering me ever since I was a little girl. I also took Ethnic American Literature and I remember reading “Salvage the Bones” and I’ll admit I had difficulty with the language because I wasn’t used to this style of writing, but I didn’t discredit it because I found it very interesting the way they spoke in the south. I’m very surprised that a classmate of yours who’s an English major would say she was very bothered by the language and grammar because she is an English major. I can only imagine how many people cringed internally by what she said relating to the language in the book. The questions that you ask at the end of your blog post was very interesting. I like the metaphor you used of a salad bowl and a melting pot, it was very creative and made me think about how the Writing Collaboratory is more about people sharing their ideas and views. So, in a way the Writing Collaboratory is a melting pot. I do believe no matter what there will always be a “Standard English” that everyone will have to learn, but I do not approve of discrediting other versions of English just because it’s not easy to understand and because it doesn’t follow the traditional white American rules.