Carefully read the following passage, which was published in Writing Centers and the New Racism. In your own words, restate the author’s argument, explain any other significant claims, and critically respond to the passage. You may want to consider the following questions as you do so:
- Are you clearly identifying and summarizing the main argument?
- Is your position clear and nuanced?
- Are you doing more than just repeating or disagreeing with the main argument?
- Are you getting bogged down in minor claims or anecdotal evidence?
- Are you including anecdotal evidence or narrative of your own, or applying the ideas in the passage to more concrete circumstances?
Please type your response in an MS Word document. You’ll have approximately 20-30 minutes to write your essay. When you’re finished, upload your response to the appropriate dropbox on Canvas.
Excerpted from Vershawn Ashanti Young (2011), “Should writers use they own English?”
Cultural critic Stanley Fish come talkin bout—in his three-piece New York Times “What Should Colleges Teach?” suit—there only one way to speak and write to get ahead in the world, that writin teachers should “clear [they] mind of the orthodoxies that have taken hold in the composition world.” He say don’t no student have a right to they own language if that language make them “vulnerable to prejudice”; that “it may be true that the standard language is a device for protecting the status quo, but that very truth is a reason for teaching it to students.” Where do I begin, cuz this man sho tryin to take the nation back to a time when we were less tolerant of linguistic and racial differences. Yeah, I said racial difference, tho my man Stan try to dismiss race when he speak on language differences. But the two be sho nuff intertwined […] Stanley Fish say he be appalled at violent racism, and get even madder at the subtle prejudice exhibited nowadays by those who claim that race is dead, that racism don’t happen no mo. But it do happen—as Fish know—when folks don’t get no jobs or get fired from jobs and worse cuz they talk and write Asian or black or with an Appalachian accent or sound like whatever ain’t the status quo. And Fish himself acquiesce to this linguistic prejudice when he come sayin that people make theyselves targets for racism if and when they don’t write and speak like he do.
But don’t nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them “vulnerable to prejudice.” As Laura Greenfield point out in her chapter on racism and writing pedagogy in this collection, it’s ATTITUDES. It be the way folks with some power perceive other people’s language. Like the way some view, say, Black English when used in school or at work. Black English don’t make it own-self oppressed. It be negative views about other people usin they own language, like what Fish express in his NYT blog, that make it so. This explain why so many bloggers on Fish’s NYT comment page was tryin to school him on why teachin one correct way lend a hand to choppin off folks’ tongues. But, let me be fair to my man Stan. He prolly unaware that he be supportin language discrimination, cuz he appeal to its acceptable form—standard language ideology, also called “dominant language ideology” (Lippi-Green 1997). Standard language ideology is the belief that there is one set of dominant language rules that stem from a single dominant discourse (like standard English) that all writers and speakers of English must conform to in order to communicate effectively. Dominant language ideology say peeps can say whateva the heck they want, howeva they want to—BUT AT HOME!