In July, a subcommittee of an organization called the Conference on College Composition and Communication that named itself the “Why We Cain’t Breathe!” subcommittee published a list of demands calling for the abolition of “White Mainstream English” to make way for “Black Linguistic Justice.”
Five English professors and a writing scholar created the list of demands, claiming students needed to “decolonize” their minds as well as the English language, as The College Fix reported.
The five chief demands of the infuriated group were:
We demand that teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects white mainstream English.
We demand that teachers stop teaching black students to code-switch! Instead, we must teach black students about anti-black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy.
We demand that political discussions and Praxis Center Black Language as teacher-researcher activism for classrooms and communities.
We demand black linguistic consciousness.
We demand that black dispositions are centered in the research and teaching of black language.
The six authors included Michigan State University Professors April Baker-Bell and Lamar Johnson; Cal State University Fullerton Professor Bonnie Williams-Farrier; Boston University Professor Davena Jackson; Texas Christian University Carmen Kynard, and English scholar Teaira McMurtry, reportedly affiliated with the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Some of the document’s statements included:
We are witnessing institutions and organizations craft statements condemning police brutality and anti-Black racism while ignoring the anti-Black skeletons in their own closets. As language and literacy researchers and educators, we acknowledge that the same anti-Black violence toward Black people in the streets across the United States mirrors the anti-Black violence that is going down in these academic streets. …
Socially constructed terms like academic language and standard English are rooted in white supremacy, whiteness, and anti-Blackness and contribute to anti-Black policies (e.g., English only) that are codified and enacted to privilege white linguistic and cultural norms while deeming Black Language inferior.
We demand teachers and researchers acknowledge that socially constructed terms such as academic language and standard English are false and entrenched in notions of white supremacy and whiteness that contribute to anti-Black linguistic racism. teachers STOP telling Black students that they have to “learn standard English to be successful because that’s just the way it is in the real world.” No, that’s not just the way it is; that’s anti-Black linguistic racism. researchers, educators, influencers, and public scholars reject notions of a single nonmainstream language category that erases the linguistic, cultural, and political specificity of Black Language and Life struggles. …
We demand that teachers and researchers decolonize their minds (and/or) language of white supremacy and anti-Black linguistic racism and study the origin theories and sociolinguistic principles that exist about Black Language. …
And in case you’ve forgotten what WE mean when WE say Black Lives Matter, we stand with the words of the three radical Black organizers and freedom dreamers/fighters—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi—who created the historic political project #BlackLivesMatter.