Linguists demand decolonization of English to ‘unlearn white supremacy’

A professional organization of linguists is calling for the decolonization of the English language. They want to completely change how it is taught and used in schools. The ‘experts’ claim the English language is entrenched in white supremacy and “anti-black linguistic racism.”

My undergraduate degree is in English and my course requirements included linguistics. One thing that stood out is a lot of communists write the theory. I don’t know if it’s still that way.

BLACK ENGLISH MUST BE ACCEPTED

The subcommittee with the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has released a list of dozens of demands that call for immediate changes to “the White Mainstream English” language in order to “decolonize” students’ minds and the English language and help students “unlearn white supremacy,” LaCorte News reported.

The news agency added, “The language of Black students has been monitored, dismissed, demonized—and taught from the positioning that using standard English and academic language means success,” a group of five English professors and a writing scholar wrote in an article titled “This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice!”

This “creates a climate of racialized inferiority toward Black Language and Black humanity,” they wrote.

One of the demands is for teachers and researchers to accept that the language is entrenched with white supremacy and whiteness and that contributes to anti-black linguistic racism. Therefore, teachers must stop telling black students to learn standard English.

Teachers must reject negative perceptions of black language (Ebonics?). They say it leads to hate, shaming, and spirit murdering.

So, let them speak however they want? We bow to poor use of language instead of the other way around.

Black language is allegedly glorious culturally. It’s not clear how far they want to take this.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication are DEMANDING the changes for the sake of black linguistic justice.

WHO THEY ARE

The professors who wrote the statement include Michigan State University Professors April Baker-Bell and Lamar Johnson; Cal State University Fullerton Professor Bonnie Williams-Farrier; Boston University Professor Davena Jackson; and Texas Christian University Carmen Kynard.

The sixth member is English scholar Teaira McMurtry, who is affiliated with the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The statement describes the authors as “Black Language scholars whose lived experiences as Black Language speakers inform [the association’s] teaching, scholarship, research, and activism.”

So far, 2,200 people liked this statement.

The Conference itself has been around since 1949 and is said to be the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition,  They are big on diverse writing.

It’s unclear how powerful this group is, but it’s the entirely wrong direction and it’s Marxist.

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