"Hi. My name is Dan Howard, and I'm a Racist."
I was getting ready to say that today in English 381, but the class kinda ended.
We were trying to express ... I'm not sure what we were trying to express anymore, but there's this frustration on the part of the public about racial minorities, particularly blacks, and how Society is to regard Them.
Like, you watch TV, and blacks are comedians, sex machines, rap stars, sports stars, and most menacingly, brutal killers.
That's all old hat, but then you throw Ebonics into the situation.
Ugh, the Ebonics debate annoys me. Not that I'm against Ebonics, just mainly I think its actually kind of a racist term, meant for politicking, and all this tripe about Black English Vernacular (more the way I prefer to hear it described) being a language separate from English that requires an ESL approach ... I dunno, while that whole approach seems horribly patronizing and unnecessarily simplistic and confusing on the issue, I do approve of the notion that no particular language variety is more or less "correct" than any other, and that educators should respect the speech that students bring to school with them as properly logical and whatnot in its own right.
The problem being of course, if a child is told their language is "wrong" that they become severely discouraged with the learning process. If their language is acceptable, but to be added to. "Okay, here's the 'proper' way to put it to a boss ..." - well that's a better way of going about things. I suppose that by giving Black variety the honor of a foreign language that is a pretty blunt way of going about things.
Anyways, why is everyone so upset about Ebonics?
Because as people who have a tendency to try to assign a qualitative (or is it quantitative?) value to things, we tend to view things as good and bad, correct and incorrect, good evil, bad, better, best, what-have-you ... the sort of more eastern style yin-yang approach. "Well this is different ... see this part is good, and with it is this bad part." is not the way we Americans tend to think.
I tend to think both ways. To quote more than one Japanese, you aren't like a "typical" American - no I'm not. But as an American, who gets to deal with our mass media, which doesn't devote much time to most topics beyond being jingoist, I realize that it's difficult to attain a view more complex than "four legs good, two legs bad" ... you know, if Black Culture is to be this menacing force of people who have been oppressed to the point of being a bunch of gangsta-rappin' crack addicts, why should we then honor the language variety they bring to the classroom. Isn't Black Culture a bad thing?
Note, I don't think "black culture" is any worse than any other culture. It's got good and bad in it, for what little it can be generalized as being the province of black people ... it's a racially-identified culture ... "oh black ... black culture?" "well, actually I'm kinda like a white black guy" "oh, black with white culture?" "well, I don't really fit in white culture paradigm either" "oh, you're a freak?"
I know somebody reading this has been rubbed the wrong way. That's what I get for trying to talk about race! (j/k)
So, what am I trying to get at here? I'm just trying to say that it takes a bit of sophisticated argument to convince your average network-news watchin' American who does have latent racist beliefs, and I am one who does have latent racist feelings and what not, that I try to address and deal with, though I try to avoid network news coverage, and I am awfully knowledgeable about language issues ... anyway it's a complex argument to put forth for the mass media, that while black culture is recognized as a generally "bad" thing to be associated with, that it is in fact a "good" thing to recognize the "black language" that children bring to the classroom with them as a good thing.
What do you think this English-only movement is about? People are afraid of Mexicans! Yeah, those lazy, shiftless grape-pickers are going to spread their lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing language throughout the country 'til we're all victims of what we perceive of as "bad" Mexican culture.
The problem really stems from the fact that Americans are asked to act more often than we're asked to think. A lot of us have gotten tired of this ideology and have stopped acting. Fewer than half of us vote anymore because we're not offered anything to think about!
Speaking of Votes, the Board of Trustees passed the Athletic Fee increase unanimously. I spent some time reeling at that, trying to understand ... over 4,000 students come out in opposition to it, disrupting the board meeting, speaking against the increase, generally expressing that they're pissed off about that. ISG complains that the lack of a binding student referendum is in violation of IBHE (Illinois Board of Higher Education) guidelines, and even Trustee Reese, who spoke of misgivings with the fee, contributes to a unanimous vote!
The phrase, Lamont's justification, "Fiduciary Responsibility" continues to echo in my mind, but why, when trying to represent the interests of the people involved with this University, a large part of that being students, is this fiduciary responsibility passed right to the students, ignoring all student opinion on the issue, making us on financial aid pay extra for something we've stated that we don't want to support? Why is none more creative solution sought? There's alumni sports fans, there's the business community, there are corporations ... hell, Nike's been screwing their workers over well enough, you'd think they could cough up 2.4 million easily.
It's a frustrating puzzle to grapple with. It doesn't make sense that the Board should act in the way it is doing. If I could answer why the Board acts as it does, if I could understand, then I could better offer to try to address that understanding. I think a big problem with student activism, is that neither the board nor the students understand each other.
Ahhh, frustrations abound!
8 October
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