Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 We Been Knowin: Toward an Antiracist Language & Literacy Education April Baker-Bell Abstract: This essay asserts the importance for English/Language Arts educators to become conversant with the features of Black Language and the cultural and historical foundations of this speech genre as a rule-bound, grammatically consistent pattern of speech. These features go beyond grammar to include such conventions as a reliance on storytelling as a means of communicating ideas. The author proposes a set of issues for educators to consider so that they may produce antiracist scholarship, praxis, and knowledge that work toward transformation and social change in service of addressing racial, cultural, and linguistic inequities in language and literacy education. The essay concludes with ten framing ideas for generating an antiracist Black Language Pedagogy in order to produce a society founded on respect and appreciation for the historical, cultural, political, and racial underpinnings of Black Language. Keywords: anti-Black linguistic racism, antiracist critical media literacies, anti-racist pedagogies, Black Language, White Mainstream English Dr. April Baker-Bell is Assistant Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education in the Department of English and African American and African Studies department at Michigan State University. Her research interrogates the intersections of sociolinguistics, anti-black racism, and antiracist pedagogies; and is concerned with anti-racist writing pedagogies, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and the health & wellness needs of women of color in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women. The root of her research stems from her experience being illprepared to address her Black students’ language and literacy needs when she worked as a high school English teacher in Detroit. As a result, her research and teaching agenda creates a pathway to cultural, linguistic, and racial justice for Black students across educational spaces. Contact the author at adbell@msu.edu. 1 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 experiences eventually led to both of my parents leaving high school without graduating. Introduction1 F or Black folks, teaching--educating--is fundamentally political because it is rooted in antiracist struggle. --bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress In November of 1992, I was awakened by my father’s reaction to the brutal murder of Malice Green at the hands of two white police officers. I can still visualize the angry tears rolling down my father’s face as he called the Detroit Police Department, at least 10 times, to protest and condemn them for their actions. I recall returning to my middle school the next day looking for an opportunity to process Malice Green’s murder, my father’s anger, police brutality, and what it meant to be Black in that social and historical moment. To my dismay, all of my teachers were silent about the incident, as if schools and literacy learning stood on the outside of racial violence. I open with the above quote by bell hooks because it accurately describes when, where, and how I enter academia. I am a storyteller and teacher-scholaractivist committed to antiracist work. Richardson (2003) reminds us that “storytelling remains one of the most powerful language and literacy practices that Black women use to convey their special knowledge” (p. 82). Throughout this article, I will tell stories about histories, personal encounters, and my teaching and research experiences as a way to reflect on the urgent need for an antiracist language and literacy education. My family’s history with racial violence and oppression has shaped how I see the world, and their stories and actions have taught me how to speak back to and against racial injustice--this is what inspired me to become a teacher. When I began my teaching career as a high school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher on the eastside of Detroit, I wanted to give my students the kind of racial literacies and awareness that my family provided to me. I wanted to enact what bell hooks describes as a revolutionary pedagogy of resistance— a way of thinking about pedagogy in relation to the practice of freedom (1994). But my motivation and inspiration to enact a revolutionary pedagogy of resistance did not coincide with the preparation (or lack thereof) that I received from my English Education program. I would have never imagined that my teacher preparation would contribute to me reproducing the same racial and linguistic inequities I was aiming to dismantle (Baker-Bell, 2020). The miseducation (Woodson, My scholarly career is rooted in the multiple identities I occupy and the stories that contextualize my family’s history with racial violence and oppression. My paternal great-grandparents migrated to Detroit, Michigan in the 1950s to escape the racial terror and violence they endured in the south. My great-uncle once shared a story with me about my great-grandparents bringing him home from a hospital in Tennessee two days after his birth and discovering that someone who had access to the hospital’s maternity ward, had written “nigger baby” on his buttocks. My parents’ educational experiences were negatively impacted by racial integration. As elementary school students, my parents were bussed to predominantly white schools and taught by teachers who reinforced racial stereotypes and upheld racist assumptions of Black intellectual inferiority. These intensely negative racial I acknowledge that there is a gender spectrum and that myriad pronouns exist that we can use when referring to individuals in our writing. Throughout this article I use pronouns to refer to individuals that correspond with the pronouns that they use to refer to themselves. 1 2 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 1933) I received during my time as a preservice teacher informs the types of questions I now answer as a language and literacy researcher—questions such as: We Been Knowin also signifies that communities of color, especially women of color, queer and trans people, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty BEEN knowin what has and has not worked. • How can I produce antiracist scholarship, Our lived experiences have continually praxis, and knowledge that work toward taught us how to think about freedom and transformation and social change? collective liberation, and have laid the • How can language and literacy research and foundation for what must be done today. teaching work against racial, cultural, and Though this article will reflect Black people’s linguistic inequities? epistemologies and language and literacy practices, I want to point out that systems of • What does racial and linguistic justice look oppression that perpetuate anti-blackness like in language and are interconnected with and literacy education? cannot be separated from how “Our lived experiences have other communities of color continuously taught us how to • How can theory, experience racism, systemic research, and practice think about freedom, injustices, and inequities. I also operate in tandem in agree with Carruthers (2018) collective liberation, and have pursuit of justice? thinking that “it is an laid the foundation for what aspiration and liberatory We Been Knowin must be done today.” politic that Black folks must The title of this article is take up for the sake of our own inspired by the 2020 JoLLE Winter Conference collective liberation and acts on the basic theme, “Doing the Work: Moving Past What We notion that none of us will be free unless all Already Know to Enact Change in Language and of us are free” (p. 10). Literacy Education.” The conference’s co-chairs, Tamara Moten and Stacia L. Long, invited attendees Indeed, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, to come together “to create and share different homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and other pathways for justice in an unjust world through forms of oppression do not serve our collective language and literacy education.” I titled my keynote liberation. This complexity suggests that an presentation for the conference and this article We antiracist language and literacy education has to be Been Knowin to suggest that we, the field of intersectional. language and literacy, BEEN2 knowin what to do move toward an antiracist language and literacy education. The real question is this: What are we waiting on to do the work? past. The feature stresses that something happened some time ago. My use of been in the phrase We Been Knowin reflects the stressed BIN feature used in Black Language. Spelled BIN among linguists, but pronounced BEEN by Black Language users, the adverb is used to mark the remote 2 3 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 Antiracist Critical Media Literacies literacies3 and Black digital activism (Mcilwain, 2020) to disrupt the media’s role in anti-Black racism, racial violence, and the maintenance of White supremacy. In particular, I observed how Black youth and Black activists used antiracist critical media literacies grounded in our communities’ knowledges to counter and rewrite the damaging narratives that were being used to project Trayvon, and by extension, other Black boys, as dangerous others (Mahiri, 2004). For instance, I learned about activist groups like the Black Youth Project (BYP) and Dream Defenders whose counterstories and analysis exposed the critical role that media consistently plays in the “debasement of Black humanity, utter indifference to Black suffering, and the denial of Black people’s right to exist” (Jeffries, 2014). I was also watching Black Twitter become a powerful voice and new form of social activism for Black people. Social justice– driven hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #AmINext, #ShutItDown, and #ICantBreathe were being used to control our narrative, control our images, produce counter-narratives, express our opinions, voice our concerns, and locate more reliable news and information about the Black community (Baker-Bell, Jones Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017). The urgent need for an antiracist language and literacy education became clearer to me following the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. As I was trying to learn more about the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death, I recall reading mainstream media news stories and social media posts that portrayed Trayvon as a thug, criminal, and troublemaker who got what he deserved. I remember seeing compromising photos of Trayvon, some that were not actual pictures of him (like the one highlighted in red in Figure 1), floating around social media that criminalized him and suggested that he was the cause of his own death. Meanwhile, the pictures that were circulating around social media of George Zimmerman, Trayvon’s murderer, portrayed him as an “upstanding,” “positive” person. At the same time, I was witnessing the ways that Black people were using antiracist critical media In 2019, following the Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand, Bree Newsome Bass, a Black woman artist and activist who drew national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and lowered the Confederate battle flag, took to Twitter to teach people about the urgency of antiracist Figure 1: Screenshot of an image from social media immediately following Trayvon Martin’s death. I am describing antiracist critical media literacies in this article as an approach where Black people play an active role in highlighting, deconstructing, and addressing patterns of media injustice, and engage in Black digital activism to raise awareness of the crisis of racial injustice. 3 4 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 critical media literacies (see Figures 2 and 3). Like many of us, Newsome Bass observed how mainstream media news outlets used the lone wolf characterization to describe the White supremacist gunman who killed more than 50 people at Christchurch. The lone wolf characterization is used “to shift our attention away from how these violent acts are part of a legacy of terrorist attacks committed by white supremacists” (Baker-Bell et al, 2017, p. 134). In response, Newsome Bass tweets: Notice how whenever a Muslim commits a terrorist act, the white political class & news media immediately make it a referendum on the religion of Islam & millions of Muslims. But when a white nationalist murders people & write a manifesto, no one interrogates the notion of whiteness…we are taught to view the daily violence of white supremacy as normal. SO, when the incident occurs in NZ, we have to pretend it is totally different and disconnected from things like racist police violence, racial segregation, racist policies, and racism itself. Figure 2: Bree Newsome Bass Tweet Part 1 This tweet is just one of many representations that illustrate how Newsome Bass and other activists are developing and using Black digital activism to challenge and resist societal narratives that perpetuate Whiteness and uphold White supremacy. Here’s the thing…we been knowin about the media’s agenda for Black people. Indeed, our ancestors and elders taught us long ago that “the media ain’t never loved us.” Malcolm X warned in 1964 that the press is irresponsible: “It will make the criminal look like the victim and make the victim look like the criminal (Breitman,1965, p. 93). Historically, media has been instrumental in reinforcing anti-Black racism and maintaining White supremacy. As hooks (1992) argues: Figure 2: Bree Newsome Bass Tweet Part 2 5 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 The institutionalization of white supremacy via mass media of specific images, representations of race, of blackness support and maintain the oppression, exploitation, and overall domination of all black people. Long before white supremacists ever reached the shores of what we now call the United States, they constructed images of blackness and black people to uphold and affirm their notions of racial superiority, their political imperialism, their will to dominate and enslave. From slavery on, white supremacists have recognized that control over images is central to the maintenance of any system of racial domination. (p. 2) This notice should serve as a radical wake-up call to language and literacy educators of the kinds of antiracist critical media literacies and Black digital activism that many Black students bring with them to the classroom. Yet, too often critical media pedagogies overlook the literacy practices that youth are already engaging in that speak back to agents and forces within media that work to stigmatize, characterize, and marginalize them. To move toward antiracist critical media literacies in the classroom, language and literacy educators must build on the already-existing critical race media literacies that Black students bring with them to their classrooms. We must also create space in our disciplinary discourses, curricular choices, and pedagogical practices for antiracist critical media literacy educators like Bree Newsome Bass, the Dream Defenders, and BYP, who exist outside of the confines of literacy “teacher education.” The Black community has long cultivated a deep and thoroughgoing skepticism regarding traditional news narratives. The antiracist critical media literacies practices that we are seeing Black youth and activists use today are part of our ancestral memory and knowledge of our predecessors (Carruthers, 2018). As Roberts noted: Antiracist Language Pedagogies “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” —James Baldwin, 1979 Many of the heavyweights behind some of the most well-known activist hashtags are Black. Take Tarana Burke, who first launched the #MeToo movement, or April Reign, creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. This type of Black digital activism mimics the tenacious efforts of, for example, Ida B. Wells, to speak truth to the real experiences of Black people in a society that is eager to suppress conversations about institutional racism that exists today. (2018) Despite there being decades of research on Black Language4, despite its survival since enslavement, and despite its linguistic imprint on the nation and globe, many ELA teachers leave their teacher education program without knowing that Black Language is a rule-based linguistic system that includes features of West African languages and has roots as deep and grammatically consistent as Scottish, Irish, and other world Englishes. This lack Smitherman (2006) describes Black Language as “a style of speaking English words with Black Flava— with Africanized semantic, grammatical, pronunciation, and rhetorical patterns. [Black Language] comes out of the experience of U.S. slave descendants. This shared experience has resulted in common language practices in the Black community. The roots of African American speech lie in the counter language, the resistance discourse, that was created as a communication system unintelligible to speakers of the dominant master class” (p. 3). 4 6 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 equipped to address the critical linguistic issues that they were raising. My research over the last ten years has helped me to better understand that Black students, and Black people in general, are in need of language that explicitly names and richly captures the types of linguistic oppression that is uniquely experienced and endured by Black Language-speakers. Because of anti-Blackness and linguistic oppression, the field of language and literacy is in need of antiracist language pedagogies that can respond to the following questions: Figure 4. Image on front cover of Baker-Bell’s forthcoming book “Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy.” Art by Dr. Grace Player of awareness, among many things, oftentimes contributes to the anti-Blackness that Black Language-speaking students experience through the curriculum and instruction, and through their teachers’ attitudes (see Figure 4). My thinking about antiracist language pedagogies stems from my being ill-prepared to address my Black students’ language and literacy practices when I worked as a high school ELA teacher in Detroit. I recall having a conversation with my students about code-switching when one of my students flat out responded, “What I look like speaking standard English? It don’t even sound right?” Some of the students questioned why they had to communicate in a way that was not reflective of their culture or linguistic backgrounds. My own cultural competence as a Black woman and Black Language speaker informed my understanding of why my students were asking these critical and important questions, but as a classroom teacher, I was ill- • What is the purpose of language education in our current racial and political context? • How can language education speak to and reflect our current times? • How do we move beyond traditional approaches to language education that do not view students’ racial and linguistic identities as interconnected? • What is the purpose of a language education if it cannot be used for various sorts of freedom or save students’ lives? These critical questions have led me to examine the relationship between anti-Blackness and language, which I am now referring to as anti-Black linguistic racism. Anti-Black linguistic racism describes the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization that Black Language speakers experience in schools and in everyday life. AntiBlack linguistic racism as a framework is important, especially because linguistic racism as experienced by Black people tends to get overlooked or is undertheorized in broader critical race scholarship and pedagogies. In my book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, I illustrate precisely how anti-Black linguistic racism 7 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 gets normalized in and through much research, disciplinary discourses, curricular choices, pedagogical practices, and teacher attitudes, and I show how damaging these decisions are on Black students’ language education and racial and linguistic identities. White middle class identity to avoid anti-Blackness, especially when they are growing up amidst Black liberation movements like Black Lives Matter, which stands against respectability politics and antiBlackness. To do so is essentially to encourage Black students to accept dominant narratives that help maintain “traditions of white privilege and Black Two pedagogical approaches that are commonly oppression” (Richardson, 2004, p. 160). In pursuit of practiced in language arts classrooms that linguistic, racial, and educational justice for Black perpetuate anti-Black linguistic racism are students, I am dreaming about an Antiracist Black eradicationist language pedagogies and respectability Language Pedagogy. In contrast to language language pedagogies. Under eradicationist pedagogies and research that either attribute Antipedagogies, Black Language is not acknowledged as Black Linguistic Racism to presumed deficiencies of a language and gets treated as linguistically, morally, Black students’ language practices, culture, behavior and intellectually inferior. The attitudes, families, or “As language and literacy goal of this approach is to communities (King, 2009) or eradicate Black Language from respond to Anti-Black researchers and educators, we students’ linguistic repertoires Linguistic Racism by cannot continue to push and replace it with White upholding White linguistic respectability language Mainstream English5. Antiand cultural norms, I am Black linguistic racism is pedagogies that require Black foregrounding Antiracist Black embedded in this approach as Language Pedagogy as a students to project a white Black Language gets transformative approach to middle class identity.” interpreted as a defect of the Black Language education child rather than a defect of (Baker-Bell, 2020). Within an the educational system’s response to it. Although antiracist Black language education framework, I respectability language pedagogies acknowledge understand Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy in Black Language as a language that should be terms of its relationship to challenging antivalidated, affirmed, and respected, the end goal of Blackness in theory, research, and practice. In this approach is to simply use Black Language as a particular, I want to underscore a salient point that bridge to learn White Mainstream English. This Dumas and ross’s (2016) make in their theory of approach perpetuates anti-Blackness as it adheres to BlackCrit: “only a critical theorization of blackness politics of respectability, surrenders to Whiteness, confronts the specificity of anti-Blackness” (p. 416). and does not challenge anti-Black linguistic racism. As far as language education, this proposition suggests that an Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy As language and literacy researchers and educators, must (1) center Blackness, (2) confront we cannot continue to push respectability language white linguistic and cultural hegemony, and (3) pedagogies that require Black students to project a contest anti-Blackness. become the invisible— or better, inaudible—norm. Following Alim and Smitherman (2012), I use the term White Mainstream English in place of standard English to emphasize how White ways of speaking 5 8 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 4. is informed by the Black Language research My vision of Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy tradition and is situated at the intersection builds on the work of many radical Black of theory and practice. intellectuals (Bailey, 1968; Fanon, 1952; Richardson, 2004; Rickford & Rickford, 2000; Smitherman, 1977; 5. rejects the myth that the same language Woodson, 1933). By grounding my work in their (White Mainstream English) and language scholarship, I am reclaiming and reconnecting with education that have been used to oppress the ideas and recommendations that have already Black students can empower them. been put forth within the Black Language research tradition. Black intellectuals make it clear that 6. acknowledges that Black Language is linguistic and racial justice for Black students is not connected to Black people’s ways of rooted in anti-Black language pedagogies that cater knowing, interpreting, resisting, and to Whiteness, but in terms of the complete and total surviving in the world (Richardson, 2004; overthrow of racist, colonial practices so that Sanchez, 2007). antiracist language pedagogies might begin to be imagined, developed, and implemented (Baker-Bell, 7. involves Black 2020). It is in this line of linguistic consciousness“Black intellectuals make it thinking that I imagine an raising that helps Black Antiracist Black Language clear that linguistic and racial students heal and overcome education. I conclude with the justice for Black students are internalized Anti-Black following ten framing ideas Linguistic Racism, develop not rooted in anti-Black below that help us move agency, take a critical stance, language pedagogies that cater toward an Antiracist Black and make political choices Language Pedagogy. to whiteness.” (Kynard, 2007) that support them in employing Black Ten Framing Ideas language “for the purposes of various sorts of freedom” (Richardson, 2004, p. 163). An antiracist Black Language Pedagogy: 1. 8. provides Black students with critical literacies and competencies to name, investigate, and dismantle White linguistic hegemony and Anti-Black Linguistic Racism. critically interrogates White linguistic hegemony and Anti-Black Linguistic Racism. 2. names and works to dismantle the normalization of Anti-Black Linguistic Racism in our research, disciplinary discourses curriculum choices, pedagogical practices, and teacher attitudes. 9. Raises Black students’ consciousness in the historical, cultural, political, and racial underpinnings of Black Language. 3. intentionally and unapologetically places the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students at the center of their language education. 10. relies on Black Language oral and literary traditions to build Black students’ linguistic flexibility and creativity skills. Provide students with opportunities to experiment, 9 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 practice, and play with Black language use, rhetoric, cadence, style, and inventiveness. antiracist language and literacy education. The real question is what are we waiting on to do the work?” We been knowin what to do move toward an 10 Journal of Language and Literacy Education Vol. 16 Issue 1—Spring 2020 References Alim, H. S., & Smitherman, G. (2012). Articulate while Black: Barack Obama, language, and race in the U.S. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. Bailey, B. (1968). Some aspects of the impact of linguistics on language teaching in disadvantaged communities. In A. L. Davis (Ed.), On the dialects of children (pp. 570–578). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black, language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. New York & Urbana, IL: Routledge & National Council of Teachers of English. Baker-Bell, A., Jones Stanbrough, R., & Everett, S. (2017). The stories they tell: Mainstream media, pedagogies of healing, and critical media literacy. English Education, 49(2),130–152. Baldwin, J. (1979, July 29). If Black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is? New York Times. Retrieved September 26, 2008, from www.nytimes.com Breitman, G. (1965). Malcolm X speaks: Selected speeches and statements. New York, NY: Grove Weidenfeld. Carruthers, C. (2018). 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