In typical patronizing fashion of the Left, a white female undergraduate researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Erika Gallagher, is arguing that learning and using proper English within school walls is too challenging and “oppressive” for black and brown students, who should instead be allowed to use “any form of English ” they feel “comfortable with,” like Ebonics, or African-American Vernacular English.
This, my friends, is what you might call “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Gallagher, whose so-called “research” was based almost entirely on interviews with just three “student leaders from marginalized groups” on campus, found that minorities being expected to learn and use proper English was oppressive; one student said such an expectation “is the biggest form of cognitive dissonance that exists.” Formal English, concluded the undergraduate researcher, is exclusionary of marginalized groups.
“I want to center the voices of the people who need to be centered,” she said. “As a Writing Fellow, as a white-passing person, I have a lot of power and privilege that should be shared.”
“Gallagher said she hopes to develop her research into a nonprofit organization that ‘teaches teachers to teach,’ with the goal that educators will eventually express disclaimers at the start of each semester that state they will accept any form of English that students are comfortable with,” reports The Daily Cardinal.
The UW-Madison student claims the “acceptance” of Ebonics, by destigmatizing the vernacular, will encourage a culture of diversity on campus.
“Just because you speak a different way doesn’t mean you’re not smart, but there’s a huge stigma around it,” stated Gallagher. “I want to teach [educators] a different rhetoric, teach them to be more accepting.”
This semester, Gallagher was chosen to present her so-called “research” on the matter at the Collegiate Conference on Composition and Communication. The student’s presence at the conference is a big deal, as she’s one one of only a handful of undergrads in the United States to attend the conference largely made up of professors and graduate students, notes The Daily Cardinal.
How exactly is it not racist to essentially view black and brown students as less capable of learning and using standard English than white students?