kosmocrator reblogged
“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.’ Lord, lord lord! 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. Remember when a black person could get hanged form the nearest tree just cuz they be black? And they fingers and heads (double entendre intended) get chopped off sometime? Stanley Fish say he be appalled at this kind of 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 fro racism if and when they don’t write and speak like he do.”
— Vershawn Ashanti Young, “Should Writers Use They Own English?”
